Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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412. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine further to Parliamentary Question No. 215 of 2 June 2021, the progress made with digitising key search aids with regard to the Land Commission; the projected timeline of this project; the result of the initial scoping of the pre-1922 records; the timeline associated with such; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15754/22]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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My officials continue to work towards the goal of providing greater access to the records of the Irish Land Commission. As a first step, my Department is working to digitise the search aids used to navigate the archive with a view to making them available to the public in due course. My Department is currently engaging with external experts on how best to achieve that objective.

The timeline for the work required is difficult to project at this point in time. Rather, at this early stage, it is more important that my officials are focused primarily on ensuring that they have the best advice and information available to them, to ensure that the project can be progressed in an appropriate and effective manner, with the care and conservation of the search aids and the records as the primary objective.

I wish to emphasise that members of the public requiring access to the records continue to be facilitated by my staff in the Records Branch. Moreover, academics and researchers requiring access to the records can apply for access to my staff at Records Branch and each application will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

In relation to the Beyond 2022project, my Department entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Trinity College Dublin, granting that project group access to former Land Commission Records. The Beyond 2022project is working to recreate the records lost in the destruction of the Public Records Office of Ireland at the Four Courts in 1922 and is not managed by my Department. For this reason, I am not in a position to report on the results of their scoping exercise or on the specific timelines to which they may be working.