Police intelligence files on more than 450 Sinn Féin and republican suspects from the first two decades of the last century, including Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera, have just been published on DVD and CD, writes Liam Reid.
The so-called Personalities Files amount to 19,000 folio pages of intelligence reports from the Crimes Special Branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary dating from 1899 to 1921, when Treaty talks took place.
The files include surveillance reports on most of the principal figures in the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the republican movement of the time. The bulk relate to 1917-1920.
However the largest proportion of files relate to civil and public servants suspected of republican sympathies, a number of whom were dismissed from their posts as a result.
They were collated to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising by a Trinity College-based company Eneclann Ltd.
The records relate solely to files held by the RIC and do not include records from the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Most of the records from the notorious "G-men", the intelligence section of the metropolitan force, were destroyed.