Fiach MacConghail (Independent)

Is this the end of the National Cultural Institutions Act 1997, initiated by the President when he was a Minister, and of the National Archives Act 1986? Will the merger of the National Archives and the National Library succeed in saving money? It will not. I know there can be reductions in costs and more sharing of services, but to abolish or merge organisations without any public consultation or even publicly stated rationale is to be regretted.

The State is to abolish the National Archives, which was established as the State Paper Office in 1702. The National Library was founded in 1877. A merger, in whatever form it takes, will create a new body that will wipe away 450 years of history. As Mr. Fintan O'Toole said, "Two bits of the public service that actually work will be dismantled and the nation's memory banks will be entrusted to some as yet unknown entity." What is the point of promoting Ireland as a nation that supports culture and attracts tourism and of talking about commemoration if we are to dismantle all this? Probably the most successful cultural project of the past 25 years, with more foreign visitors than many organisations, is the online project of digitising the 1901 and 1911 census returns.

This morning, I read in The Irish Times that one of our eminent historians, Professor Diarmuid Ferriter, has resigned from the board of the National Library. This is worrying and a warning to us in this House. Professor Ferriter, an extraordinary historian who has brought the archive into the folk mind of the way historians now talk about history, said there was "'little clarity' from the Government as to the reason for proposed mergers". Professor Ferriter also pointed out the irony of the Government working on a decade of centenary commemorations to mark the foundation of the State while it was intent on doing untold damage to the very institutions that are the custodians of so much of that history. I propose an amendment to the Order of Business calling on the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Jimmy Deenihan, to come to the House today to discuss this matter.