The Catholic parish church registers are now available online with free access. The National Library of Ireland (NLI) has launched a dedicated website with free access to almost 400,000 images of Catholic parish register microfilms. The period covered by the release is from 1740’s to 1880’s. Having spent many hours doing research of parish registers in the National Library of Ireland for various counties of Ireland, particularly Waterford, I wish to express a word of caution. The start date of some registers may be a little deceptive as only fragments of the early entries may have survived and unfortunately when you are attempting to trace your ancestors the chances are its those particular entries that are of most interest to you. On the positive side it will be brilliant to have online access to these records and this new website should definitely assist in tracing some of our more elusive ancestors!
The Church Registers website is: www.registers.nli.ie