Sir, - As a professional genealogist who travels (both individually and as a group leader) to Ireland for research at least once each year, I am writing to express frustration at my recent experiences at the General Register Office (GRO) in Dublin. Although facility improvements have been made since last year, these have been far overshadowed by longer queues and a severe decline in service. I purposely schedule my visits for October/November, thus avoiding the congestion caused by overseas visitors - but instead found the queues longer than ever.
On a positive note, the research room has been enlarged since last year in an effort to address overcrowding.
However, the new procedures introduced at the same time have rendered the GRO useless for effective genealogical research. It is important to understand that genealogy research is an iterative process.
Information gathered from one document, provides clues that often lead to a need to examine other documents.
Under the previous procedures, a researcher paid a daily General Search fee and was free to retrieve and search the various Civil Registration index volumes.
When a viable entry was located, a request was submitted to obtain a photocopy of the record, which was usually provided by the staff in less than 30 minutes. This allowed the researcher to analyse the content of the photocopy to determine the next step.
With the advent of these recent ill-conceived revisions to the procedures, the ability to perform effective research at the GRO has been virtually eliminated. This logistical change requires that the staff spend virtually all of its time retrieving/distributing volumes - resulting in an increase in the turnaround time to obtain the required photocopy from 30 minutes to two weeks. This is unacceptable!
During my recent visit, I requested a photocopy of a birth entry and was told that it would be posted to me in two weeks. This means that during a week of planned research at the GRO, I could perform only the first step in the research process. In this situation, the particular birth for which I was searching could have been any one of six possible entries. Instead of requesting one photocopy at a time, I had no option but to request all six at once. This approach was more costly for me, and added to the workload of the staff. I could not be sure which was the correct entry until I returned to the United States, and therefore couldn't pursue further research during my time in Ireland.
Travelling all the way to Ireland to research under these conditions is certainly not cost-effective. In lieu of GRO research, genealogists living in the United States will likely utilise the microfilm copies of the Irish Civil Registration Indexes (and many of the actual records) available through the LDS (Mormon) Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. Actually, it is incomprehensible to me that this microfilm research capability exists in the US, but is not available to Irish researchers in Dublin either through the National Library or National Archives. - Yours, etc.,
Richard M. Doherty, Past President, Irish Geanealogical Society of Michigan, Troy, Michigan, USA.