Yesterday (March 12th 2008), saw the official launch of an Irish website where you can access church records of genealogical value…at a price….€5 (initial offer) per go. Is this a bit steep?
I quote: “The Irish Family History Foundation is the coordinating body for a network of county based genealogical research centres on the island of Ireland. These centres have computerised millions of Irish genealogical records, including church records, census returns and gravestone inscriptions.”
The site is: www.irish-roots.ie but it is listed as www.irish-roots.net on the site…..so take your pick.
Some counties do not yet have records available online. Let’s hope the digitizing process speeds up too as it has been slow sometimes due to the lack of co-operation of the holders of the original records. But, even when records have been digitized, they often have not available in a useful way to the public. I welcome the initiative of making the records available online but I think the price is a bit off putting.
See alsowww.jamesgalvin.com for comments.
Genetic Genealogist 
http://www.irish-roots.ie is a better domain name than the .net, but it is still suicide to have a hyphen in there. With so much time and money having gone into this project, the least they could do was get a good domain name. I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for the Cork South records?
I have emailed IFHF (Irish Family History Foundation) to enquire when they expect Counties Cork (excluding North Cork) and Kerry records to be made available online. If I get a reply, I will post it. I don’t expect it to happen in the near future.
My reply from the IFHF regarding the possibility of making Cork and Kerry records available online is as follows:
At this time there are no plans as there is no functioning centre in Co. Kerry and in the case of the rest of Cork there is no IFHF centre doing
those records. There is a centre in Cork City which is computerizing the records of the deaneries of Cork.
Perhaps if we can generate some finances we will be in a position to do something about Cork and Kerry.
Yours sincerely
IFHF
There are a couple of discussions at the Leitrim-Roscommon site on this subject which you might find interesting.
http://www.leitrim-roscommon.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=51215
Yeah, the price is stiupid steep. Many, like me, are doing needle-in-the haystack searches on names that can be pretty common. At least provide a parish so that people can triangulate leads. Geez.
They ought to sell monthly subs that allow unlimited searches. This is typical greed that I have seen from the Heritage Centres.