This Irish Genealogy site offers the Irish descendant (from New York, Canada, UK, Australia...) the chance to trace their Irish family tree and search for their surname origins and the records of their Irish ancestor's birth, marriage or death.

Kyle J. Betit is a professional genealogist, lecturer and author residing in Salt Lake City, Utah. Kyle specializes in Irish and immigration research. Kyle Betit is Research Director of ProGenealogists, Inc., in Salt Lake City and the author of the Irish Genealogy Pages at http://www.progenealogists.com/ireland/ .

Did you know that if one of your grandparents was born in Ireland, you may be able to obtain Irish citizenship? The Republic of Ireland does grant citizenship to applicants who can prove their descent from a grandparent born in Ireland. The processing of obtaining Irish citizenship through a grandparent who was born in Ireland includes registering your birth in the "Foreign Births Register" of Ireland.

You must prove the connection between you and your father or mother, and the connection between your parent and the Irish-born grandparent. This is usually done primarily by collecting the birth, marriage, and death certificates for your parent and grandparent, as well as various documents proving your own identity and parentage. In Ireland and Britain, such certificates are usually referred to as “civil registration.” In the United States, they are usually referred to as “vital records.” Specific information about the documents you will need for each generation can be found on the Irish Citizenship web page by ProGenealogists, Inc., at http://www.progenealogists.com/ireland/citizenship.htm .

Why would you want Irish citizenship? People apply for various reasons. Some want to be able to work in Ireland and the rest of the European Union. Others would like to stand in shorter lines in European airports. Irish citizens can travel and work freely throughout the European Union.

Sometimes you can run into problems trying to obtain official birth certificates, either in Ireland or abroad, if your parent or grandparent was born before a particular jurisdiction began keeping records. I recently worked with a client whose father was born in Utah before this state began keeping birth records. Sometimes, even when a jurisdiction was keeping birth records, a particular birth may not have been recorded. Often the Irish government will accept church baptismal records as substitutes for civil birth records, and often it is necessary to get an official statement from the civil jurisdiction that there was no birth record recorded.

The civil registration of births in Ireland did not begin until 1864, and even then many births went unrecorded, especially in the first decades of civil registration of births. For the Irish-born grandparent, you will need to obtain the official certificate of birth – not just a photocopy of the birth entry. Presently this certificate costs 6.98 Euro to obtain from the General Register Office. Recently, the main office of the General Register Office was moved to Roscommon Town in the west of Ireland, but there is still an office at Joyce House in Dublin. Birth certificates dating prior to 1900 must be obtained from the office in Roscommon, while birth certificates from 1900 onwards can be obtained at the office in Dublin. More information is available from the GRO website here: http://www.groireland.ie .

The Genealogical Society of Utah microfilmed the birth records of Ireland from 1864 through the first quarter of 1881, and they are available at the Family History Library in Salt lake City, Utah. These records are indexed on a nationwide basis. They can be searched at the Family History Library or at any of the branch Family History Centers around the world (see http://www.familysearch.org ). Many of the births from the time period 1864-1881 have been indexed online in the International Genealogical Index (see also http://www.familysearch.org ), so this is a good place to start for a search for your grandparent’s birth record if he or she was born in the period 1864-1881. For more information about the indexing of civil records of birth in the International Genealogical Index and in a second source on CD-Rom, see the Irish Civil Registration web page at http://www.irishabroad.com/yourroots/expert/civilregistration.asp.

Many of the cities and states in the United States have indexes to their vital records (birth, marriage, and death) available online. For example, marriage and death records from New York City are indexed on the Italian Genealogical Group web site at http://www.italiangen.org . A fairly comprehensive listing of the vital records online for the United States may be found on ProGenealogists’s Genealogy Sleuth web page at http://www.progenealogists.com/genealogysleuthb.htm .

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