Valuable State enterprise papers could be dumped if action was not taken by the Government, warned Mr Maurice Manning, Fine Gael leader in the House.
The history of this State was in many ways interwoven with enterprises such as the ESB, RTE, Bord na Mona, Bord Failte, Aer Lingus and other such bodies which had helped to shape Irish life over many years. Mr Manning said these bodies were not obliged to look after their archives, nor were they required to transfer their records to the National Archives. The Minister should introduce legislation to ensure that such records could be brought under the purview of the archives.
The Leas-Cathaoirleach, Mr Liam Cosgrave (FG), emphasised the need to ensure that unique records, especially from the latter end of this millennium, were safeguarded for future generations. un Laoghaire, and he hoped the Minister could guarantee that its potential development would be ensured and its security maintained.
The Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms de Valera, said that the National Archives Act 1986 dealt primarily with the records of departments and offices of State.
It also provided that public service organisations could be brought within its scope. Public service organisations meant any type of body that received some level of public funding. In such cases , records of public service organisations could be made transferable to the National Archives by virtue of a general power contained in the Act. This would require that she, as Minister, but only at the request of the body concerned, would declare that the records or any part of them of the public organisation concerned were now subject to all the mandatory provisions in the Act.
Ms de Valera said she would be pleased to explore with any public sector company or semi-state body any plans it might have in relation to the care of its archival records, but she stressed that any such initiative should come from the company itself.