§ MR. KAVANAGH (for Mr. BRUEN)asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, If it is true that a considerable portion of the parochial records of the united diocese of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, comprising registers of births, deaths, and marriages for upwards of a century, has lately been lost in transit from the Irish Church Commissioners to the Diocesan Registrar of that diocese; whether that loss was owing to an insufficient and incorrect address having been placed by the Commissioners on the box containing those documents; whether the documents were sold as unclaimed goods at a public auction in Dublin by order of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company, and bought as waste paper by a Mr. James Ganly; and, if the above statement is substantially correct, whether any steps have been taken, or will be taken, by the Church Commissioners to regain possession of docu- 1820 ments of so much public importance, and of which they had the custody?
§ SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH, in reply, said, that some of the parochial records of the united diocese of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin were sent by railway by the Irish Church Commissioners simultaneously with a posted letter of advice to the diocesan registrar; but, owing to the mistake of a vowel in the name, the parcel was taken to a tradesman, who declined to receive it. The contents were afterwards sold by the railway company as unclaimed goods to Mr. Ganly, of Dublin, from whom they had been recovered, and handed over to the Treasury Solicitor in Dublin.