Military Archives is the place of deposit for the archives of the Defence Forces, the Department of Defence and the Army Pensions Board, under the terms of the National Archives Act, 1986. Archives are records with a special significance, records that are deemed to be of enduring value, for a variety of reasons. The term record includes paper documents such as ‘one off’ files, letters and memoranda, as well as pictorial records such as photographs and film. This is unlike the material held in a typical library, which is almost always printed or published material that has been widely disseminated in bound volume (book) format. Archives are therefore absolutely unique and irreplaceable: once lost they can never be recovered. Increasingly, archives today are also acquired in electronic format – whether sound, image or text digital files.
The Military Archives is an official place of deposit since 1990 as defined in the National Archives Act, 1986. From as early as 1924, the National Army recognising the importance of the War of Independence undertook to preserve historical documents from that time. A number of the earliest collections preserved by the Historical Section include the Collins Papers and Captured Documents (Civil War up to 1925), which continue to be made available today
