Research into Irish social and political history is being seriously impeded by the State's refusal to make Land Commission records "freely accessible", a leading historian has claimed.
Dr Terence Dooley, an author and lecturer in modern history at NUI Maynooth, said "researchers as a body are becoming increasingly frustrated" at their inability to access the estimated 11 million records relating to the commission, which was responsible for redistributing land in the State up to the 1980s.
"There is no doubt this is the single most important, social economic, if not political, archive of the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century," he told The Irish Times.
The documents are currently held by the Department of Agriculture. Under Section 8 (2) of the 1986 National Archives Act, the release of records dating over 30 years old can be withheld if they continue to be "working records" or if they contain information that might cause "distress or danger to living persons".
In a newly published book on the land question in Ireland, Dr Dooley said researchers were becoming increasingly frustrated by not being able to gain access to vital information for scholarly research.
"It seems remarkable that, even though the Land Commission has been officially disbanded, all of its records are still considered 'working records'."
Dr Dooley said the problem was exacerbated by the absence of an archivist at the records office. "A typical researcher would want days if not weeks to go through material. If you are only given a couple of hours you can't do much."
A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, which took over the functions of the commission, said researchers could apply in writing to its head of legal services for access to records and everything possible would be done to facilitate them. He noted: "There is a sensitivity about a lot of the files", given they related to "clients" of the Department.
The spokesman pointed out that people who were given possession of land by the commission did not have ownership until after 30 years, and therefore records relating to those transactions "are not dead".
But Dr Dooley said: "Surely section 8 (2) cannot and should not be interpreted to apply to the millions of documents on hand. After all, the fundamental purpose of the 1986 legislation was to enhance scholarly research.
"It is something of an anomaly that the Act should now be used as a pretext to limit access to such an important source."
He said it was fortunate that there was already "ample information in the public domain" on the commission to allow him complete his study, The Land for the People: politics and the land question in independent Ireland, published by UCD Press. In the book, Dr Dooley argues that land redistribution was used to reward political supporters, particularly by Fianna Fáil after 1932.
