Madam, - On a recent visit to the General Register Office in Dublin to carry out family history research I was gobsmacked to find that the cost of ordering a photocopy of a record had risen from €1.90 to €4.
The Minister responsible for the GRO, Mary Harney, famously urged us to "shop around" to beat extortionate prices. However birth, marriage and death records are available only at the GRO. Ms Harney is presiding over an eye-watering price rise of more than 100 per cent. This, I would suggest, is proportionally the mother of all rip-offs in the rip-off Republic.
To make matters worse the GRO does not allow customers to check the accuracy of records in advance. Multiple records often need to be bought to find the correct entry. If you are unfortunate enough to be looking for, say, John Kelly, born in Dublin between 1890 and 1895, then you'd better bring a purse stuffed with fifties. - Yours, etc,
M.G. KELLY, Terenure, Dublin 6W.