Good news for those with an interest in Irish genealogy. For some time now, we have known Irish Catholic parish records would be put an the internet with a searchable index.

Find My Past has put a searchable index of Irish Catholic parish records online, and it is free for a limited time. This has long been desirable since the are the state of useful records for Irish genealogy is so poor. In fact, births of Catholics were not included in public records until 1864.

Many of those records that did exist were destroyed during the Irish civil war. So the state of genealogical records in Ireland is pretty bad for everyone and worse for those of us with Catholic ancestors. That is why a searchable index for Irish Catholic parish records is so important.

So here is Find My Past’s announcement (from the email received this morning):

We’re excited to reveal the launch of 10 million new Irish Catholic Parish Registers on Findmypast today. Covering the majority of Ireland, this incredible record set includes 40 million names, 3,500 registers and over 1,000 parishes. To celebrate, we’re making all 110 million Irish records free for everyone until 7th March.

So a free look for a limited time (until March 7, 2016 to be exact). Hope you find something useful.

Here is a link for searching Irish Catholic parish records.

I took a quick look just before writing this. I’ve found some records with fairly complete information (names of parents, etc.), some with more limited information (maybe name, date and place), some with an image, and some with a link to a scan at National Library of Ireland.

The quality of the scan and the amount of information is variable but you’ll never know if there is enough to be useful for you unless you look. Did I mention, it is free until March 7?