Unhappy bunnies in Dublin over civil registration indexes fiasco

It seems that there are a few unhappy bunnies in Dublin just now over the recent fiasco concerning the online provision of up to date indexes for civil registration records of births, marriages and deaths - the records that sort of appeared and disappeared at the same time very recently. The Minister for Heritage, Heather Humphreys, is quoted in the Irish Times as apparently having had a go at the Data Protection Commissioner for comments made to the press in the aftermath of the decision to have the records removed from the Irish Genealogy site (www.irishgenealogy.ie). For all the juicy gossip, see www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/humphreys-riled-by-comments-on-data-security-1.1994305.

Crucially, the commissioner has now agreed to limit the available data to records for births more than 100 years old, marriages more than 75 years old and deaths more than 50 years old, replicating the provision to that of the online Geni website for Northern Ireland (http://geni.nidirect.gov.uk), although it also provides images of the registers within those closure periods. Amendments to the necessary legislation are currently going through the Irish parliament.

(With thanks to Joe Buggy @townlandorigin)

Chris

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