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Minister Kehoe today welcomed the first online release for 2018 of material from the Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection (MSPC). Today will see the release of 4,000 new files relating to claims lodged by 1,442 individuals, or their dependants that contain new and unique information on the revolutionary period.
The release also coincides with the 10th anniversary of the commencement of the Project in 2008. The purpose of the project was to make records available to the public and to historians in good time for the centenary of the 1916 Rising in 2016. Since this first release of material in 2014, just under 90,000 files have been processed with 25,000 scanned files fully downloadable online. Approximately 1.2million individual scanned pages have been scanned since the commencement of the project.
Speaking in relation to today’s release the Minister said “I welcome today’s release of material from the Military Service Pensions Collection. This material is of major historical value as it is the largest release of files relating to female participation linked to the revolutionary period, amounting to more than 600 individuals with circa 1,400 records. The records of the period from 1916-1923, that are now made available online, bring the pages of history to life for the current generations in a user friendly and meaningful manner. I am also awaiting with keen interest the release of the Brigade Activity Report series comprised of 151 files which will be made available on line in October 2018. This upcoming release of material will afford the current generation a unique opportunity to view the role their ancestors played in shaping this country”
Referring to the 10th anniversary of the commencement of the project the Minister said “I am very proud of the extensive work done on the project over the last ten years. The broad appeal of this project which reaches out to members of the public, our school children, historians, academics and the diaspora, is proof positive of its significance. I commend all the personnel involved with the project to date and I look forward to future releases.”
NOTE FOR EDITORS
The Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection (MSPC) project is a joint Department of Defence and Defence Forces contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. The project is mandated to release the files and records of the Department of Defence dealing with the service of qualifying members of the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, the Hibernian Rifles, Cumann na mBan, Na Fianna Éireann and the Irish Republican Army from the period April 1916 to the 30th of September 1923. This involves cataloguing and partially digitising nearly 300,000 files.