Harbours Act, 1996

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Records and archives of companies and harbour authorities.

92.—(1) Each of the following, namely, a company and a harbour authority, shall, subject to the provisions of this section, make arrangements for—

(a) the proper management, custody, care and conservation of its or their records and archives, and

(b) the inspection by the public of its or their archives.

(2) A company or harbour authority may—

(a) co-operate with one or more local authorities or other persons in establishing and operating a local archives service, and may reimburse those authorities or persons for expenditure incurred by them in establishing and operating such a service in so far as it relates to the company's or harbour authority's records and archives; and

(b) with the consent of any local authority or other person which or who is operating a local archives service, delegate to that authority or person any of the functions conferred on the company or harbour authority by this section in so far as they relate to archives.

(3) The Minister may, after consultation with the Minister for the Environment and the Director of the National Archives, give advice, or, as the Minister thinks appropriate, directions, to a company or a harbour authority in relation to any matter relating to its or their records and archives and, in particular and without prejudice to the foregoing, in relation to the doing of any of the following things by the company or harbour authority as respects its or their records and archives (which each company and harbour authority is hereby empowered to do), namely—

(a) the retention, management, preservation, restoration and reproduction of records and archives,

(b) the certification of records to be unsuitable for classification as archives, and the review of such certification at specified intervals,

(c) the availability of archives for public inspection,

(d) the making and provision of copies and extracts from archives,

(e) circumstances in which archives, or particular classes of archives, may be withheld from public inspection,

(f) the preparation of guides, lists, indexes and finding aids to archives,

(g) the lending of archives to appropriate institutions, bodies and societies, whether in the State or elsewhere, and

(h) the disposal of records and harbour archives,

and the company or harbour authority shall have regard to any such advice and shall comply with any such directions.

(4) (a) In this section, “records” in relation to a company or har-bour authority, includes books, maps, plans, drawings, papers, files, photographs, films, microfilms and other micrographic records, sound recordings, pictorial records, magnetic tapes, magnetic discs, optical or video discs, other machine-readable records, and other documentary or processed material, made or received, and held in the course of its or their business or as successor to any other body, by the company or harbour authority, and includes copies of any such records duly made, but does not include—

(i) grants, deeds or other documents of title relating to property for the time being vested in the company or harbour authority, and

(ii) any part of the permanent collection of a library, museum or gallery.

(b) In this section “archives”, in relation to a company or harbour authority, includes all records as aforesaid which are more than 30 years old, except such records as are certified by the company or harbour authority under subsection (3) to be unsuitable for classification as archives.

(5) Section 13 of the National Archives Act, 1986 , shall cease to have effect in relation to records or documents of a company or harbour authority.

(6) Without prejudice to subsection (3), the National Archives Advisory Council may advise the Minister on any matter affecting archives of companies and harbour authorities and their use by the public.

(7) Nothing in this section shall affect any rights of a person claiming to be the owner of a document to recover the document.

(8) The making or supplying of reproductions by or under the direction of a company or harbour authority of archives which are held in accordance with this section and are open to public inspection shall not constitute an infringement of the copyright of such archives.

(9) A person shall not conceal, damage or destroy archives held in accordance with this section and shall not remove, publish or reproduce the whole or any part of any such archives without the written consent of the relevant company or harbour authority.

(10) A person who contravenes subsection (9) shall be guilty of an offence.