Ireland

Funding cuts put historic Irish documents at risk

The board of the National Library of Ireland sought extra funding for its work preserving historic documents
The board of the National Library of Ireland sought extra funding for its work preserving historic documents The board of the National Library of Ireland sought extra funding for its work preserving historic documents

HISTORIC documents housed in the National Library of Ireland are deteriorating because they are being stored in inadequate conditions.

RTÉ revealed on Wednesday that the NLI board had written to the Republic’s heritage minister Heather Humphreys seeking an extra €500,000 annually to carry out its work collecting and preserving the documented and intellectual record of life in Ireland.

The board warned that the buildings used to house the library on Dublin’s Kildare Street, adjacent to Leinster House, needed substantial investment and refurbishment.

It said that all of the library’s collections were deteriorating because of the absence of environmental controls while there was a major risk that up to three quarters of its collections could be destroyed by fire because of a lack of adequate protection.

The library's funding was slashed from almost €12 million in 2006 to just over €7m in 2014.

The building houses more than 10 million items, including books, manuscripts, newspapers, prints, drawings, ephemera, photographs and digital media.

Its collections include Gaelic manuscripts dating from the 14th century as well as the personal papers of Irish politicians such as Daniel O'Connell and documents relating to writers like James Joyce, Seamus Heaney and William Butler Yeats.