Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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151. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in view of the fact that the spend on the storage of records intended for the National Archives in 2013 was, at minimum, €1,227,807, her views on reviewing the current abilities of the staff of the National Archives of Ireland to properly catalogue, digitise and store these records, in an effort to reduce both pre-cataloguing storage costs and to reduce potential degradation of records; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5509/15]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I am pleased that, after a number of years of funding reductions, I was in a position this year to increase the National Archives budget and, in addition, that sanction has been given to run a competition for additional archivists for the National Archives.

I am also very conscious that the storage capacity of the National Archives needs to be improved and, to that end, as part of its capital stimulus package, the Government agreed to provide funding this year for phase one of a development plan at the Archives headquarters in Bishop Street. The OPW will shortly go to tender for the project and it is anticipated that works could begin by mid-2015. This will greatly increase the storage capacity of the National Archives.

I am confident that the combination of both the increased resources and the commencement of the phased development plan will go a long way to addressing the long-standing difficulties at the National Archives.