Records from 2000 and 2001 made publicly available online for first time
Date published:
Public records dating from 2000 and 2001 relating to the establishment of new political institutions in Northern Ireland as well as earlier years have been added to the CAIN (Conflict Archive on the Internet) website.
This is part of ongoing work involving the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) and Ulster University.
The new material, which until now has not been accessible to the public online, provides insights into events and developments of this period.
It includes:
- The initial efforts to establish some measure of governance under the new political bodies and institutions established in April 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement / Belfast Agreement.
- Development of policies in relation to issues such as victims and language.
- The potential development of a national sports stadium.
- Responses to major international and national events in 2001 such as the attack on the World Trade Centre in September and the foot and mouth crisis earlier in the year.
David Huddleston, PRONI Acting Director, highlights the importance of the continued collaborative project between PRONI and Ulster University.
He said:
“PRONI’s work with CAIN and the ongoing digitisation of historical records has resulted in these unique records becoming accessible for the first time to a global audience. This latest set of official records dating from 2000 and 2001, which are now freely available to view, help to further the understanding of our recent past by showing the details and thinking behind political developments.
“The PRONI on CAIN resource contains a significant volume of archive material dating from the 1960s to 2001 and I welcome the ongoing collaboration with Ulster University which has made this possible.”
Dr Brendan Lynn, CAIN Deputy Director and Politics Lecturer at Ulster University, added: “CAIN is pleased to be able to continue its partnership with PRONI. The addition of this new material brings the total number of PRONI documents to just over 4,610 items. On behalf of CAIN, I want to thank the Department for Communities for the funding it provided back in January 2024, that enabled this latest piece of work to be completed”.
The records are now available on the CAIN website.
Notes to editors:
- The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) is a division of the Department for Communities and is located at 2 Titanic Boulevard, Titanic Quarter, Belfast. PRONI website:
- The CAIN website provides an extensive range of information and source material on the conflict and politics from 1968 to the present day. The site is used by a worldwide audience and has received more than 26 million visits since it was launched in March 1997.
- Currently there are more than 4,610 PRONI public records on CAIN and this amounts to over 19,000 pages.
- CAIN is based at Ulster University, within INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute) and the School of Applied Social & Policy Sciences: CAIN is a component of ARK (Access Research Knowledge) a resource providing access to social and political material that inform social and political debate in the region and raises the profile of social science research. ARK is based within Ulster University and at Queen’s University Belfast.
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