Sir, - In Dr John Bowman's absorbing article (The Irish Times, November 6th) on John Charles McQuaid and Dr Noel Browne, there is a reference to Dr Browne with his "closest" civil servants in the Department of Health destroying documents in the files.
Last year, according to correspondence quoted in an article on the Supt Geary case (The Irish Times, January 23rd, 1998) the Department of Justice routinely intimated in the early 1970s its difficulties in reopening the case because of an ongoing process of destroying its files.
That is all too credible: after the scandal of records in Waterford Court House in 1979, the Department of Justice at first attempted to defend itself by claiming that they had been destroyed with authority.
What sort of State do we live in? De Valera, fearing invasion, destroyed documents in the second World War. The French did not, nor did the British - even after Dunkirk, when the Germans were hourly expected. The Office of Public Works lightheartedly destroyed, apparently in the late 1960s, all its Famine records (up to 800 letters a day arrived in the 1840s).
Two taoisigh assured successive deputations of historians in 1970 and later that they would put an embargo on destruction. It went gaily on, and to some extent even after the National Archives Act of 1986.
To execute the terms of the act, the National Archives has had no extra staff, apart from four contract archivist posts on short-term assignments. Many Departments have failed to turn over records; there are huge gaps even in what has been turned over; and the listing of the material is itself grossly defective.
For a State with regular scandals in administration, a Freedom of Information Act, and a Taoiseach who "consigns things to history" (i.e. to the rubbish bin), the significance of this goes far beyond the needs or interests of historians. It is yet one more scandal to add to many others, and calls in question the integrity of the State at its most basic or primary level. - Yours, etc.,
L. M. Cullen, Professor of Modern Irish History, Trinity College, Dublin 2.