Irish Civil records are intact and these include all Births, Marriages and Deaths from 1864, although some early births may have missed registration. In addition, non-Catholic and Registry Office marriages were included in the registers from 1845.

An index to the Civil records is available in the GRO research room in Dublin and also online on familysearch. Certs can be ordered from GRO (www.groireland.ie) using the references details provided i.e. Record Type (Birth, Marriage or Death), Name, Year/Quarter, Registration District, Volume Number & Page Number.

The 1911 Irish census is available online (free) on the National Archives website. The 1901 data is being processed at the moment and is due to be added later in 2010. No other earlier complete Irish census returns have survived and only fragments of earlier ones for a few places survive.

Many Irish birth (and some marriage) records have been extracted from civil and church records and included in the Internationla Genealoogical Index (IGI) on familysearch.org. The records included are between the start of civil registration and the late 1870s.

For research prior to the start of civil registration church records will be required, and to start researching this you need to know two details : religion & location (parish, town or townland). Some areas of Ireland are available on several subscription and pay-per-view websites.

Location of actual records depends mainly on the religion involved, but Catholic records are available on microfilm in the National Library in Kildare St, in Dublin (website : www.nli.ie), and most Church of Ireland records are available in the Representative Church Body Library in Rathfarnham (website : ireland.anglican.org/library/).