Sir, - As one who has recently come to study local history and who makes much use of public records, I empathise with those who have written you about the great burden and handicap that has followed since the destruction of Ireland's Public Records Office during the last civil war. I now wish to make some helpful suggestions to the powers-that-be, who read your letters.
Recently the Registry of Deeds, at Henrietta Street, has raised the price from £4 to £10 for a photocopy of any memorial of a deed, which might summarise a person's will or the transfer of a person's property (often including information of historic interest). The Registry's customers are mostly persons conducting historical research. The Registry has also created a new daily charge for persons researching there, without providing any assistance to the researcher. One can readily accept charges for copies of information which is of commercial interest, but for information where the enquirer has virtually no commercial interest and which is mostly gathered for the cultural benefit of a community, surely the services should be free or provided for a nominal fee? These charges, together with other new impediments created at the General Registrar's office already reported by your correspondents, came in the wake of a £20 million taxpayer's deontas to the wealthy GAA at Croke Park.
The destruction of the Public Records Office material lends greater weight to substitutes. One such of great potential is the Census of Population carried out in 1922 or thereabouts. Unfortunately, because of some 100 year-rule or other, access to it is denied to researchers. May I suggest that it now be published, as a relatively cost-free gesture, if need be to commemorate the millennium? Most of the material therein is available elsewhere, such as births, marriages and deaths and connected information, but not all of it. I can think of no good reason why the full 1922 census ought not be made public now, as are the 1901 and 1911 censuses, the only other complete ones available on Ireland.
My third suggestion relates to the indexing of your own and other national newspapers. Researchers can trace references in The Times of London, but not in Irish daily newspapers. Why not? Some years ago, when I was a member of Arbour Hill Prison visiting committee, I learned of an indexing project undertaken by the inmates which had been discontinued, apparently because of the possibility that they might destroy the papers. At present local papers, such as the Leinster Leader, are being indexed by young persons engaged in Fas training programmes. As the benefits are essentially of public, cultural interest this is another cause for public funding, now that we can afford it. - Yours, etc.,
John Colgan, Leixlip, Co Kildare.