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PRONI - Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

PRONI Annual Releases

The PRONI Annual Release of selected official files continues against a background of greater public access through the Freedom of Information Act (2000), balanced against the need to protect personal information.

'PRONI Annual Release' explained

Every year since 1976, official records held by PRONI which are 30 years old have been reviewed and some made publicly available.

In September 2011 the time limit for the release changed from 30 years to 20 years. This change is being phased in over 10 years, with two years’ worth of records being reviewed and released each year.

In 2022, the records of Northern Ireland (NI) departments and the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) - 

  • with a terminal date of 1999 were brought forward for release during December.

This process involves the referral of the files to the Responsible Authority for sensitivity review. This entails a page by page examination to make sure that a record contains nothing sensitive as defined by the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act (DP).

Records released in December 2022

  • 512 files being deemed as suitable for release as “fully open”
  • a further 220 files are open but keeping to blanking out of some content
  • 29 files will stay closed in full, the bulk of which are individual prisoner files

The main file series being released includes Central Secretariat files.

Issues covered

Some of the main significant issues covered by the 1999 release include:

  • Preparation for Devolution
  • British/Irish Council meetings
  • Setting up the NI Assembly
  • North/South Implementation bodies
  • Central Community Relations Unit
  • Disposal of military property
  • Funding of Political Parties
  • Civil Unrest during the summer of 1998
  • Policy on Abortion
  • Belfast-Dublin Rail link

Full and partial closure

Records may be closed either fully or in part only. Partial closure involves the removal of a limited number of papers from the files to make them suitable for release under FOI.

For the release of as much information as possible, redaction can be used to blank out sensitive data within individual documents to make them suitable for release.

All information which is withheld, must be kept as per the exemptions contained within the FOI Act. In most cases, the reason for extended closure was the application of section 40 which is the personal information exemption of the FOI Act. This means that personal information can't be published as this would break the Data Protection principles.

Note that any file reference which ends with an ‘A’ means that an open part of a file has had certain information partly removed or blanked out due to a FOI Exemption.

What's usually published

More recently, PRONI publishes:

A full list of all files brought forward for release in a given year, containing:

  • access decision
  • PRONI reference number
  • file covering dates
  • short description (usually no more than one line)
  • department file number

A highlights list of ‘opened’ files which may be of particular historical significance, containing:

  • PRONI reference number
  • file covering dates
  • longer description (usually a paragraph)
  • department file number

List of records released in 2022

2022 PRONI Annual Releases (end December 2022)

Archive

PRONI Annual Releases Contents

  • 1999 Releases - 1968 files
  • 2000 Releases - 1969 files
  • 2001 Releases - 1970 files
  • 2002 Releases - 1971 files
  • 2003 Releases - 1972 files
  • 2004 Releases - 1973 files
  • 2005 Releases - 1974 & 1975 files
  • 2006 Releases - 1976 files
  • 2007 Releases - 1977 files
  • 2008 Releases - 1978 files
  • 2009 Releases - 1979 files
  • 2010 Releases - 1980 files
  • 2011 Releases - 1981 files
  • 2012 Releases - 1982 files
  • 2013 Releases - 1983 & 1984 files
  • 2014 Releases - 1985 & 1986 files
  • 2015 Releases - 1987 & 1988 files
  • 2016 Releases - 1989 & 1990 files
  • 2017 Releases - 1991 & 1992 files
  • 2018 Releases - 1993 & 1994 files
  • 2019 Releases - 1995 & 1996 Files
  • 2020 Releases - 1997 files
  • 2021 Releases - 1998 files
  • 2022 Releases - 1999 files

Book traversal links for PRONI Annual Releases

  • 1999 Releases - 1968 files
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