Ms Bríd Dooley:

Currently, we have a staff of 39. They look after everything, including all the projects. According to colleagues abroad, this is comparable with numbers internationally. We probably have a few less than most, but the number is there or thereabouts. The legislation in its current form would require additional staff and services. There has not really been a cost-benefit analysis as to what would be involved. It is hard to say without the relevant information and detailed scrutiny of what would be needed to deliver on this legislation.

Based on my role and expertise in the archives, I can say that to create an archive of the kind in question, open to all in the way envisaged in the legislation, is not impossible, but work would have to be done to create appropriate finding aids. If we look to our colleagues elsewhere who are doing this kind of work, we see that the BFI archive, which was one of the examples given by the Deputy, was developed over years. A special finding aid was developed specifically for the kind of research done, based on the expectation one would have today with respect to searching archives.

The catalogues we hold are business records. They are extremely good and are very effective for the kind of professional research services we provide every day. However, one of the reasons we first went into publishing our archives website, which started way back around 2006, when the Internet screen was the size of a postage stamp when you looked at a video, was that we were genuinely trying to find ways to make the archives accessible. We could not provide an individual material copying service and did not hold copyright in respect of everything, so we asked whether we could find a novel approach. We were pioneers in this regard. Since 2015, our service has really grown. It is a matter of audience engagement and public engagement. It is not only a matter of members of the public but also of researchers. It is a really good starting point for understanding what is in the audiovisual archive and what is not. The archive is curated, so people are given an understanding of the particular snippet they have. There might not be a complete programme and there are many gaps. All the records we are digitising right now have to be developed further in terms of metadata just to make them accessible in the daily work of the professionals who come in to use the archive, as well as the academics and others.

I do not know how much what is proposed would cost but it needs scrutiny at the level in question.