The failure of some Government departments to release documents to the National Archives was "a scandal", the National Archives Advisory Council has complained in its latest report.
Meanwhile, a €20 million plan to upgrade the archives, which has been promised since 1997, is now under threat because of cutbacks in the Office of Public Works, sources have told The Irish Times.
In its final report before the end of its term in office, the advisory council said the transfer of records under Section 8 of the National Archives Act 1986 has "not been satisfactory".
"In part this has been because of the failure of some departments to comply with their legal obligations. It is a scandal when government fails to comply with the law and the legislation must be tightened up to prevent this," it said.
Last night, sources close to the advisory council said the record of the Departments of Education and Science, Agriculture and Finance remained poor, while Justice was still blocking the release of too many documents on security grounds.
The Government should appoint departmental archivists who would work together with the National Archives to ensure that the law was observed, rather than leaving the matter solely in the hands of the departments, the council argued.
In a separate report, the director of the archives, Dr David Craig, has said that space was now at such a premium that the last "empty shelving" in its Bishop Street, Dublin offices would be full by the end of the year.
The safeguarding of the documents held by the archives is under question because temperature, humidity and light "in almost every part" of the Bishop Street offices were outside recommended levels.
"There are two scandals afoot here. One, departments are not releasing documents in the way that they should, and at the time that they should. Two, the archives don't have anywhere to put them if they did," said one advisory council figure.
The archives were so "poorly equipped" to deal with the Government's digital records that they could not "embark with any confidence" on an attempt even to preserve their own electronic files, said Dr Craig. "Much of the business of government is now transacted electronically and it is essential that resources, both knowledge and physical, are put in place to enable the archives thus created to be preserved in the future," he wrote in his 2001 report.
