And 'Ireland's Genealogical Gazette' believes it will help bring more tourists into the city.

The monthly newsletter of the Genealogical Society of Ireland says, Limerick City Council has most certainly thrown down the gauntlet to all other local authorities by its decision to utilise its archival and heritage resources as a means to promote an awareness, appreciation and knowledge of the social history of its city.

Burial records for the City's largest cemetery, Mount Saint Lawrence, dating back to 1855 are accessible on the internet free of charge.

"This latter point is a hugely significant departure from the blinkered norm in Ireland. Many in Ireland viewed genealogical records as 'potential earners' to be computer-ised and shamefully sold at unsustainably high prices to gullible tourists.

"This Society has battled since its foundation against this blatant commercialisation of our nation's genealogical heritage.

"The 'Principle of Public Ownership and Right of Access' to our genealogical heritage adopted by the Society at its 1997 AGM has slowly emerged as the enlightened public policy of many institutions," it says.

"Those with Limerick ancestry will be able to locate the burial place of their forefathers and in doing so, be encouraged to find out more information on the City, its environs and especially, its rich and varied history. This is an investment in the City's tourism potential and in essence it is creating and informing future visitors to the City. This is precisely the intelligent and strategic use of genealogical records publicly advocated by this Society since 1990. These re-sources should be freely available online to encourage and sustain an interest in the mother country amongst the millions of her Dias-pora."

The Society says it has consistently argued that genealogical records should not be viewed as commercial products in themselves, but simply as components of a wider marketing strategy. Any costs involved in the upload-ing of these records to the web-sites of the local authorities could be offset by suitably targeted advertising of tourism facilities in each county. If the link between the Diaspora and these shores is essentially one of sentiment and longing for a knowledge of ancestry, then any dampening of this initial enthusiasm for the 'old country' by the imposition of charges, pay-for-view or otherwise, to access records such as parish or burial records is simply counterproductive.