Storage problems with State papers

MANY STATE papers due to become available to the public yesterday will not be accessible because of storage problems at the National Archives.

The building, on Bishop Street in Dublin, is critically short of storage space for its records and over 100,000 boxes of important documents are stored in a warehouse with no environmental control.

State papers from 1979 officially became available to the public yesterday under the 30-year rule.

The papers include documents from the Department of An Taoiseach, Department of Finance and Department of Foreign Affairs Irish embassies around the world.

All Government department documents should be available for inspection at the archives. But due to a shortage of space in the building, some departments have had to retain their documents.

Other documents have been sent to the archives, but are stored in a warehouse and are almost impossible to access.

A third of State documents are stored on an instantly-accessible shelving system within the National Archives building and a further third are stored in the Four Courts and are accessible within 24 hours.

But over 100,000 boxes, a third of all State documents currently archived, are stored in a warehouse at the rear of the Bishop Street building. The boxes are piled on wooden pallets making them difficult and expensive to access.

The warehouse has no humidity control and has also had ongoing problems with its roof.

Archives keeper Frances McGee, who is responsible for storage and preservation, said the storage conditions are not ideal.

“If paper is stored in good condition it will last a very long time. It must not be too warm and relative humidity must be right; it is very important that it is dry.

“It is very difficult to achieve those conditions if the building is not purpose-built,” she said.

She said some space will become available within the Bishop Street building when Land Commission documents are moved out, but this will be filled instantly with a two-year backlog of documents currently in the warehouse or held back by various Government departments.

“We are so critically short of space we put a lot of energy into short-term solutions, energy that could be better used elsewhere,” Ms McGee said.

“In the long term the only solution is to provide new, purpose-built accommodation for the State’s archives somewhere in the city centre.”

No one was available for comment from the OPW.