A NEW TRANCHE of Irish civil records has been made available online to members of the public from today.

Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection Minister, Regina Doherty and Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan have announced an update to the collection of historical registers of births, marriages and deaths.

The records, which include all civil marriage records from 1845, birth register records for 1919 and death register records for 1969, are now available online and free for the public to access.

The new marriage records are for non-Catholic marriages only, as civil registration of Catholic marriages did not commence until 1864.

The release is part of an initiative by both departments to provide online access to historical records and registers compiled by the Civil Registration Service.

It means more records can now be readily accessed for family history and historical research purposes.

The records – which were prepared by the Civil Registration Service and uploaded by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht – can be accessed on the website www.irishgenealogy.ie.

The full range of records now available online are:

• Birth records from 1864 to 1919
• Marriage records from 1845 to 1944
• Death records from 1878 to 1969

There is no charge for accessing the records. 

Doherty said the completion of the project to make all historical civil marriage register records available online was a “great achievement” for the Civil Registration Service which would ensure the preservation of the records for the future.

“The marriages project has taken a number of years to complete – given the condition of some of the older records – but all historic marriages are now accessible online for the first time,” she said.

Madigan added that the two departments would continue their aim to make all historic records freely available and easily accessible to members of the public.

Work will continue on the digitisation of images for up to 1.5 million death records covering the period from 1864 to 1877, which remain to be released to the public.

A separate project between the two departments will also see the publication of a number of other registers held by the Civil Registration Service, including a record of Irish personnel killed during World War 1, army registers relating to births, deaths and marriages and other registers maintained by the consular services.