A big welcome to the IFHF on-line genealogy databases

I am delighted that the Irish Family History Foundation has made a major step towards making searchable parish records for the whole of Ireland available through the Irish Genealogical Online Record Search System. This will surely revolutionise genealogical research for Ireland.

So far, records are online (ifhf.brsgenealogy.com) for 19 of the counties of Ireland: Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Cork (north), Down, Dublin, Fermanagh, Galway, Kildare, Kilkenny, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Roscommon, Tipperary, Tyrone and Westmeath. Those for Donegal, Sligo and Wicklow are "coming soon", whilst for 10 counties plus Cork (south) and Dublin City there are no indications of when yet they will become available online: Carlow, Clare, Derry, Kerry, Laoise, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Waterford and Wexford.

This development by the IFHF is a far-sighted one. I am sure that by making it much easier and more efficient for individuals to search their indexes online for free and then obtain selected full records also online for a reasonable fee, they will greatly promote Irish genealogical research and increase the income of the member organisations of the IFHF.

For the most part the records cover the nineteenth century. In the county records so far available I have found 673 CONDR*N baptisms and 278 marriages, plus a few dozens of births, deaths and burials records. Of these, the counties with the most occurences of these names are Dublin, Kildare and Westmeath.

As the CONDR*Ns originate in the heartlands of Offaly (King's County) and Laoise (Queen's County), it is a slight regret that these two counties are not amonst those already online. It is very much to be hoped that Irish Midlands Ancestry, who hold the records for Offaly and Laoise, will engage with this initiative and put their records online in the near future.