Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 25 February 2021
144. Deputy Patricia Ryan asked the Minister for Defence the number of pension applications yet to be digitised under the Military Service Pensions Collection; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10606/21]
View answerThe Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection (MSPC) project is a joint Department of Defence and Defence Forces contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. The MSPC owes its origins to the decision of the Oireachtas of Saorstát Éireann in June 1923 to recognise and compensate wounded members, and the widows, children and dependents of deceased members of Óglaigh na hÉireann, including the National Forces, the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Republican Army and the Irish Citizen Army through the payment of allowances and gratuities. Over time, provision was enhanced and broadened to include members of the Hibernian Rifles, Cumann na mBan, Fianna Éireann and certain members of the Connaught Rangers. Two streams of legislation are relevant to the material in the collection:
- The Army Pensions Acts from 1923 to 1953
- The Military Service Pensions Acts, 1924, 1934 and 1949.
The MSPC project is mandated to preserve and make available the files and records of the Department of Defence dealing with the service of qualifying members of these organisations from the period April 1916 to the 30th of September 1923. This involves cataloguing and digitising in excess of 275,000 files
Public release of material from the collection is made available online through the Military Archives website www.militaryarchives.ie. To date there have been nine online releases of material, the most recent release was in October 2020. Since its first release of material, over 100,000 files have been processed with approximately 40,000 files scanned. Over 2 million individual pages have been digitised since the commencement of the project.
The latest release of material, along with previous releases, provides an invaluable source of information that continues to greatly facilitate research around this defining period in Irish history, and captures first-hand accounts of individuals that participated in events of that period.
The digitisation of the file, which is performed for both preservation and for access, is only one small aspect of the process in making files available to the public. In order to follow international standards for archival cataloguing and before a file is scanned it must be examined physically, repaired and cleaned. Information is also extracted for database retrieval online and any GDPR issues are examined. The file may then need to be flattened to ensure that it is safe to be handled for scanning. It is only after this process has been completed that the file may be scanned. Each scanned file is then linked to its archival description and following this process, files are ready to be released online.
For files held in the Military Services Pension Collection, on average one single claimant may have 3 files under their name. In addition, and to note, files can vary in size from a couple of pages up to several hundred pages. To date, the project team have scanned the files of circa 15,000 applicants, which represent around 40,000 files. It is estimated that the collection encompasses the claims of approx 80,000 applicants. There has been a focus on prioritising the digitisation of files of successful claimants which generally are larger in size than files of unsuccessful claimants and therefore take longer to process.
The aim of the Military Services Pensions Collection project during 2021 is to continue to make additional files available through planned releases, adding to the substantial corpus of digitised primary sources already available online.
