The Politics of Land, Part Two

Tonight we focus on the work of the Land Commission, an institution that had been around for four decades by the time of Irish independence, but was reconstituted by the Free State government a century ago this year.

We also look at the long-running controversy over the Commission archives. We ask why, four decades after it finished its work, and twenty-four years after it was finally dissolved, can scholars and the general public still not get access to its unique records?

In this programme we hear from the following guests:

Dr. Terence Dooley is Professor of History at Maynooth University and in his book, The Land for the People he has studied the agrarian policies of the first governments of the Irish Free State.

Dr. Anne Murphy is Emeritus Research Fellow of the Technological University in Dublin. Thousands of Irish families would have had dealings with the Land Commission over a period of more than a century. One such family was the Geoghegans, two brothers, James and Patrick Geoghegan, of County Leitrim, who, in the early 1900s, paid £3600 for a farm on the Creevy estate in Leitrim owned by the La Touche banking family. Anne Murphy is their descendant, granddaughter and grandniece. She has documented the relationship between the Geoghegans and the Land Commission in a unique family archive.

Fiona Fitzsimons is an academic, a professional genealogist, and CEO of Eneclann, a leading provider of Irish history, genealogical and heritage services.

Catriona Crowe is an historian, archivist, and former Head of Special Projects at the National Archives of Ireland. In her time with the National Archives, she watched warily, and at times anxiously, as the Land Commission records remained in an administrative limbo.