Dear Editor,
As an archivist with three decades of service, I am heartened by the suggested legislation to safeguard privately-owned documents tied to Ireland’s institutional history (“Legislation posed to criminalise the destruction of institutional abuse survivors’ records”, News, October 15th). Nevertheless, a significant amount of harm has unfortunately already occurred, and it isn’t clear to me how retrospective punishment can be applied for such deliberate record obliteration. Furthermore, to my knowledge, there has never been any legal action, let alone a guilty verdict, brought under Section 18 of the National Archives Act or any comparable legislation.
Kind Regards,
Donal Moore,
Ferrybank,
Waterford.