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From: "JJ Woods" <>
Subject: [IRL-LIMERICK] Irish Family History Foundation
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:23:21 +0000


Please read the following news item from Irish Times Newspaper. If any
person wishes to support Olivia Mitchell's call that the Genealogical
information should be free to all researchers , they should write in support
to:

Olivia Mitchell T. D. Dail Eireann , Leinster House , Kildare Street, Dublin
2.

*email; *
**
*or*
**
*Irish Times Newspaper, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2 *
**
****
*Date:* 13 March 2008
*Publication:* The Irish Times
*SUMMARY:* 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.
*ORIGINAL ARTICLE:* The new all-Ireland central database of genealogical
records was launched yesterday by the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism,
Seamus 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 8.6million 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 EUR 10 for
every single item of information. "The gathering and digitisation 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.

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