The Irish Times, 13th March 2008

'Genealogy service fees criticised'

THE LAUNCH of a new national genealogy service that will charge people for every public record accessed has been criticised as a "betrayal" of the long-established tradition that public information in this country should be available free of charge.

The new all-Ireland central database of genealogical records was launched yesterday by the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Séamus Brennan, and the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness, at a ceremony on the Jeanie Johnston, the replica Famine-era sailing ship moored in Dublin.

The website, sponsored by the Irish Family History Association, contains 8.6 million birth, baptismal and deaths records from the 1600s to the 1900s obtained from a variety of State and church archives.

However, Fine Gael spokeswoman for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Olivia Mitchell, said that it was very regrettable that the new genealogy service was designed to be a commercial one with people being charged €10 for every single item of information.

"The gathering and digitalisation of the parish records was done at public expense and it was always envisaged that this kind of public information should be made freely available to the public.

"It is a complete break with tradition and practice that an important aspect of our national archives should be subject to a charge.

"We have prided ourselves on free access to our archives, to our national museums and to the National Gallery. I am surprised that the Minister should lend his name to this betrayal by performing the launch of the online service," said Ms Mitchell.

She said that an online service was long overdue.

But Ms Mitchell called for the information to be given to the National Archives as an integral part of the public information service it provides.

She added that she had no objection to the Irish Family History Association charging a fee to people who commissioned it to carry out research, but it was utterly unacceptable that Irish citizens be charged for accessing their own family records assembled at public expense.

The association said in a statement that the bulk of the computerisation of genealogical material had been completed by county centres and that the collation of many millions of records as a searchable database online was a remarkable achievement.

So far, 22 county centres had made their databases available online and it was planned that further centres would be added, the association added.

The Irish Times, 14th March 2008

'Iconic' building needed for archives - Brennan

MARIE O'HALLORAN

MINISTER FOR the Arts Séamus Brennan is considering the construction of an "iconic" building to house the national archives. He said that "just like our museum or our library, they need the same kind of national status".

Mr Brennan said there was about €20 million in the national development plan for the archives. "It does not specifically lay down that it is for a building, but I have come to the conclusion that the archives are unsung heroes that need to be brought centre stage."

Fine Gael arts spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell had asked when the new board of the National Archives Advisory Council would be appointed. It was a statutory body, "but we have had no body since last November", she said.

"If there had been such a body, it might have advised him not to put what little genealogy records we have left in the hands of groups of people who are charging for it."

She was referring to the launching of a new national genealogy service which will charge for accessing public records.

The State would spend hundreds of thousands of euro "sending Government Ministers overseas to showcase Ireland to our diaspora" and in the same week "we are telling them we will charge them for information on their forefathers".

Mr Brennan said that he wanted to address a range of issues around the national archives. "In most countries, the national archives are a major institution and are usually housed in an iconic building and looked on with pride by the citizenry.

"I'm not saying that is not the case here, but we tend to take a storage view of our archives rather than a view that we are proud of what we have managed to assemble. We saw it recently when we published the 1911 census on the web. Already there have been 17 million hits."

Mr Brennan said it was a "bigger issue" than just the fees, adding: "I would like to take a broader national view of these archives to see how we can bring them centre stage in our artistic world."