The Irish Government website www.irishgenealogy.ie has expanded the images of birth, marriage and death registrations being made available online. Researchers can now search the index of marriages (1864-1941) and view the original marriage registration entries from 1870 to 1941.  The index of deaths (1864-1966) now links to images of death registrations from 1878 to 1966.  The images of birth registrations has been extended to 1916.  User submitted corrections up to July of 2017 have also been added.  The earliest marriage and death registration images are expected to go online later in 2018.

This website is entirely free to use and you can now check the original entries for nearly the entire 19th and early 20th century records of civil registration for Ireland.  Being able to view the original record is vital for research.  Transcripts of marriage records on sites like Ancestry often only include the names of the bride and groom and the names of their fathers.  However, the original registration will include addresses and occupations as well as the denomination of the church in which the marriage took place and the names of the witnesses, who can often be siblings of the bride and groom.    A birth registration does not just record the name and date of birth of the child, but also the names of the parents and in some small cases, the location of the father if he is not at home at the time of the birth.  This includes the father working or serving overseas or being deceased at the time of death, vital information for family history research.