Philip R Lane: Launch of the Central Bank of Ireland's archives
Speech by Mr Philip R Lane, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, at the launch of the Central
Bank of Ireland's archives, Dublin, 31 August 2017.
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Good evening. Welcome to the new North Wall Quay headquarters of the Central Bank of
Ireland. I am delighted to welcome you all to this ceremony to mark the opening of our archives to
the public and our own staff. Let me especially welcome Justice John Hedigan, the Chair of the
National Archives Advisory Council (NAAC) and the other members of the NAAC, and John
McDonough, the Director of the National Archives of Ireland. I am also glad that our business
partners from Arcline Ltd., which has run the Records & Archives unit since 2011, are also able
to join us tonight to mark this milestone.
The Bank's archives have up until now principally been for limited internal use and have not been
formally open to the public. The Bank decided in 2012 to allow public access to the organisation's
historical archives under controlled procedures. As a result, our new headquarters was designed
to incorporate an archive reading room and supporting facilities.
The records created, maintained and received by the bank in carrying out its statutory duties and
obligations are ultimately, like the Bank itself, owned by the public. In this way, we are bringing the
Bank into line with other public bodies and peer central banks. The archives of the Bank form part
of the cultural patrimony of Ireland and they will now rightly be available to the Irish people and
more widely.
The Bank's archive policy was approved in 2016, in which we have adopted our own rules for
transfer of records by Bank divisions to the archive and a 30-year rule for releasing archives to
the public.
We have also developed an online catalogue of the archival materials we hold to allow the public
to search online and identify what they would like to consult, along with booking appointments
online to access the archival materials in our reading room.
The opening of the archives is in line with our commitment to increase transparency and
promote public understanding of the role and functions of the Central Bank. The archives are
also being used to support our outreach activities. These include online initiatives through social
media, local community events and our schools programme. The archives also provide much
source material for the Bank's Exhibition Programme in our new visitor space, which is adjacent
to the archival reading room. For example, much of the primary source material in our 'Pounds,
Schillings and Independence' exhibition comes from our archive collections.
The wider access to the archives will also increase the volume of long-term economic and
banking data available to policy makers and scholars. While our official publications have always
been in the public, the reasoning in many cases behind our policy decisions will now be also
available to scholarly researchers. I believe that this will make a significant contribution to
economic, financial and social research.
At a general level, the Bank's archives provide many insights into the economic development in
Ireland. More narrowly, there is significant material on the establishment and the design of Irish
currency, the services that the Bank provides to both the Irish public and internationally, and the
day-to-day workings of the Bank, with our earliest records dating back to 1786.
To give you a flavour of what our archival collections contain:
12,000+ paper files dating from the foundation of the currency commission in 1927; and the
Bank from its inception in 1943.
4,000+ photographic prints. Principally of the social aspects of the life of the Bank, our
buildings along with conferences and events.560+ architectural plans and drawings
including the various premises owned or purchased by the Bank, such as Foster Place;
Fitzwilliam House, College Green, and Sam Stephenson's masterpeice of our former
headquarters in Dame St.
250+ bound ledgers. These include two smaller collections: namely a portion of the Free
State and later Republic of Ireland Land Commission bonds and the archives of the
Commercial Building Company.
Finally, it holds various artefacts relating to aspects of the production and design of Irish national
bank notes and coinage.
The archives of the Commercial Buildings Company Ltd. form a stand-alone collection within our
collections. Its premises were situated on Dame Street and were built in 1799 and designed by
Edward Parke. Its most famous occupants, the Ouzel Galley Society resided in the buildings
from 1805 until they were sold to the Central Bank of Ireland in 1963.
The Ouzel Galley, illustrated on the seal on display in the adjacent room, was an Irish merchant
ship that set sail from Dublin in 1695 en route to the port of Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire. The
ship did not return as scheduled within the following year. After a further two year period with no
sightings, she was presumed lost. A panel of Dublin merchants was set up in order to settle the
question over insurance, resulting in the ship's owners receiving compensation.
In 1700, the ship returned to Dublin and the Captain, Eoghan Massey, claimed that his men had
spent five years in captivity at the hands of Algerian corsairs, who had used the ship to engage in
acts of piracy.
As compensation had been paid out two years previously, the ownership of the ship's cargo
became a matter of intense debate and controversy. The same panel of merchants, which had
settled the debate in 1698 on the ship's fate, met once more in order to decide that all monies
remaining following the proper compensation of the owners should go towards a fund for the
alleviation of poverty among Dublin's "decayed merchants".
Out of this case emerged the Ouzel Galley Society, which was founded to act as a permanent
arbitration body to deal with similar shipping disputes that might arise. The Ouzel Galley Society
was wound up in 1888 and its functions subsumed by the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and
the Commercial Buildings Company, whose premises and assets the Bank purchased in 1963
to facilitate the building of the Dame Street tower.
This is a unique archive collection documenting aspects of the economic and social history of
Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries. The oldest record we hold is the imports and
export ledger for Ireland from the year 1786.
In conclusion, I would like to cite the mission statement of the new service:
"The mission of the archive is to collect, preserve, promote and make accessible records
charting the history of the Bank and its contribution to the development of Ireland."
With those words in mind, I am delighted to officially launch the Central Bank of Ireland archives.