One of the most anticipated releases from the Military Service Pensions Collection (MSPC) has been published.
These archives already provide a wealth of information on Ireland's revolutionary period, and are still being added to and expanded.
The new Brigade Activity Reports (BARs) highlight in detail the activities of the IRA during the revolutionary period - from attack plans to names and addresses of those involved - and archivists are eager to make them as accessible as possible to the general public, primarily through a revamped website.
Staff from the MSPC, based in Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines, Dublin, have been sifting through pension applications from former members of groups such as the IRA, Cumann na mBan, Fianna Éireann, the National Army, and the Irish Citizen Army, submitted during the 1930s.
This has already revealed information ranging from a famous chipper’s connection to the 3rd Battalion C Company of the old IRA to 10-year-old dispatch carriers.
The nominal rolls of IRA membership across the country has also been previously published.
The files released today were assembled in the 1930s for the committee overseeing the administration of the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934. Due to sheer volume of applications they received - some 50,000 by the end of 1935 - they requested finer details on who was involved in the revolutionary activities, where, and when.
In order to do this, former members of the IRA were asked to form committees consisting of previous brigade and battalion staff, and tasked detailing operations and activities undertaken by the Irish Volunteers and the IRA.
The resulting files vary in quality of information, and archivists are eager to stress that they come with a health warning: Some provide sketchy details, some are rich in their description of individual gun fights and maneuvers, while others are simply inaccurate, with typos and misleading dates and place names.
The variation in detail is mostly down to the committees 'learning on the job' as to how much information they needed.
"Not one archival source ever will give you all the answers," Cécile Gordon, project manager and senior archivist at the MSPC, explained, "You have to use it with other sources, in parallel with the nominal roles and individual [pension] claims."
She said that while the value of the archive to historians is clear, the value to the general public might be less obvious.
To ensure the new files are as accessible as possible and can be utilised by as many people as possible, the MSPC section of militaryarchives.ie has been revamped, with new timelines, maps, and highlighted events that pull together all relevant files in one place.
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