Madam, – There is currently a boom in genealogy in Ireland and abroad, as witnessed by the growing numbers flocking to record offices. Yet on a recent visit to the General Register Office search room in the Irish Life Centre, Middle Abbey Street, Dublin, I was struck once again by the inefficiency of the system in operation there.
There are no computer research facilities for GRO users, who must search manually for birth, marriage and death entries in printed indexes, of which there are only single copies. Users must order paper copy registrations but are restricted to five items per day, with any balance to be sent out by post. The fees charged mean that there will be little change left out of €50 after a typical visit. At a time of cutbacks in health, education and welfare, I do not subscribe to the view that all genealogical records can be made available without charge by the State, but value for money paid is the key issue in the case of the GRO.
As part of the multi-million Government project to upgrade the Irish civil registration service, the older records were digitised, but for reasons which cannot be fully ascertained, the resulting database has not been released for public use either in GRO offices or online via the internet. Those in the know will be aware that the Mormons have placed online at FamilySearch.org, for free and at absolutely no cost to the Irish taxpayer, the indexes only to Irish births, marriages and deaths from 1864. Pending the completion of their own mysteriously stalled digitisation project, cannot the mandarins swallow their pride and at least place a bank of computers tuned to FamilySearch.org in the Middle Abbey Street search room? – Yours, etc,