Family tree research - Irish Vital Records

Ponster

I'm researching a little about my wife's family in the UK and have been using ancestry.com to help combined with freebdm to find birth/marriage/death indices. Once I've found the right record I can apply online for a copy for less than €10 and it takes about 7 days to arrive.

I'd now like to do the same for my family in Ireland but was having little luck until I saw pinkypinky's link to the Latter Day Saints archives.

Now armed with the correct reference I'm unsure as to the fees associated with getting certs which are on this site : http://www.groireland.ie/fees.htm

Is it just €10 for the cert once I have the Year, Quarter, Volume and page Number?

I saw this but am unsure if it's what I need or not.

Photocopies of entries in the registers are also available at a cost of €6.00, (additional copies -€4.00). These contain exactly the same information as a Certificate but are only of use for research purposes.

Also on the form that I need to fill out to order a cert they don't provide for the fact that I already have the "Year, Quarter, Volume and page Number"! They ask for the usual details (name, address, etc...) and say that there's a €4 charge if they don't find it but I already know where it is so I'm confused as to how I can tell them this on their form?

Am I going about this the right way?

Ponster

And what's more......

[rant]

They look for the following information :

*Birth Surname: ……………………………………* Date of Birth (dd/mm/yyyy): ……………………

*Forename(s) in full: ………………………………………………………………………………..……….

*Address of Place of Birth (Hospital/Home): …………………………………………………………….


*Mother’s Birth Surname: ……………………… Mother’s Forename: ……………………………….

Father’s Surname: ……………………………… Father’s Forename: …..…………………………….




Now for someone born in 1883 I haven't a clue as to his mom's maiden name. I don't even know his exact DoB. That's why I want the damn cert !
[/rant]


Does anyone know if they'll reject incomplete forms?

pinkypinky

It's ok.

You want to order the one that costs €6. You only need the €10 one for legal or social welfare purposes (usually to do with living or recently living people). That is why the form is set out for modern information like PPS numbers.

Just fill in the information that you do have and use the space on one of the lines you don't have (eg PPS) for the Year, Quarter, Volume and page Number.

They won't reject incomplete forms - they're just crap at having a separate form for research.

Best of luck!

Ponster

pinkypinky wrote: »

They won't reject incomplete forms - they're just crap at having a separate form for research.

Best of luck!

I was hoping that that would be your reply

Living in France I'm used to having to have all the infomation required plus some extra in case it comes in useful !
I'm glad that it isn't as expensive as I had originally thought but the lack of online payments doesn't really help people who aren't living in Eire and who don't have Irish bank accounts.

pinkypinky

No but I have safely and successfully faxed them my orders with credit card details a few times.

johnny_doyle

the Irish records can be a real source of frustration as so many didn't register births, marriages or deaths or varied the spelling from one to the other.

I go over to Dublin fairly regularly to search the records. The staff are very helpful. The photocopied entries are useful but not high quality :

http://www.mywebtree.co.uk/doyle/john-s-doyle-b26-Dec-1912s.jpg

http://www.mywebtree.co.uk/doyle/Thomas%20Doyle%20death.jpg

Genealogy_Guy

pinkypinky wrote: »

It's ok.

You want to order the one that costs €6. You only need the €10 one for legal or social welfare purposes (usually to do with living or recently living people). That is why the form is set out for modern information like PPS numbers.

Just fill in the information that you do have and use the space on one of the lines you don't have (eg PPS) for the Year, Quarter, Volume and page Number.

They won't reject incomplete forms - they're just crap at having a separate form for research.

Best of luck!

If you are only doing family tree research, you do not need to buy official certificates at 10 euro each.

You will need to go to the GRO Research Room in Building 7, Irish Life Mall, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1. Here you can search any five consecutive years of index books for a fee of 2 euro. There is a daily rate of 20 euro to search as much as you want in any index books.

When you find the references that you want in the indexes, you can request a scanned copy of the the record itself. This will have more information, like exact location of birth, mothers and fathers full names, etc. The scanned copy costs 4 euro. And there is a limit of 5 scanned copies per day per person.

At this stage if you want an official birth certificate, it will still 10 euro in Joyce House, Lombard Street, Dublin 2. The official birth certificate will still have the same information as on the scanned copy, no more and no less.

Regards

pinkypinky

Genealogy Guy,

You are right about Dublin - we were talking about going direct to Roscommon for people who cannot get to the research room in Dublin.

There's no need to pay them for searches anymore at all. With the family search pilot site, I do all my searching there and then just drop in with a bunch of index references, fill out the forms and wait for them to print.

However, even being in Dublin, the research room hours are terrible. If you have a fulltime job, you have to take a half day to get in there just to place the orders, which makes the 5 limit cap very frustrating. I try to get a friend to come with me sometimes so we can get 10 between us!

And just to clarify, the information you get in the research room is identical to that which you can order by post or fax from Roscommon.