Birth Certificate Republic of Ireland


UK GRO Certificates provides a fast and simple service to obtain an official birth certificate registered in the Republic of Ireland.

We provide only the Long/Full version birth certificate  and these can be used when applying for a first British Passport, driving licence, job application or providing proof of age when claiming a pension.

Birth records are limited to the beginning of civil registration within each country. For the Republic of Ireland order online for any event which took place on or after 1st July 1837 to the current date provided you have sufficient information to identify the entry. A 3 year search for the index reference will be carried out.

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  • £ 34.90 /copy

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  • £ 39.50 /copy

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In Ireland birth records date from 1864, when the Irish civil registration system was introduced. Until this time, a child's arrival was recorded only by baptism (or christening, according to religious denomination).

Although it became compulsory to register all Irish births with a local registrar, some Irish births were not recorded, particularly in the early years. Some estimates put non-registration as high as 15% in some of the vast rural areas of the west where it might have meant a day's trek (or more) for a new parent to reach a registration office. In other areas, estimates of non-compliance are usually set at 10% for the first fifteen years or so. But even by the 1880s, the need to register a birth might have been overlooked. This happened in my own family when my great-uncle William Sentry was born in 1882. He simply doesn't appear in the General Registry Office's centralised birth indexes nor in the original registers.

On joining the Post Office (then part of the British Civil Service) aged 20, he had to provide a baptism certificate and school references as substitutes for a birth certificate.

I've no reason to believe this was an intentional 'oversight' by my great-grandparents because they registered all seven of their other children. Interestingly, though, the date recorded on their son Timothy's birth certificate is not the date he celebrated his birthday (see below). His parents may have declared a later birth date in order to avoid a late registration fine.

These examples show that, in Ireland, birth records are not necessarily complete and accurate, even if they do survive in their entirety!

All Irish birth certificates contain the following information:

  • Date of birth
  • Place of birth (town land or urban street name/house number)
  • Name of child (sometimes blank or 'male' or 'female' if not yet decided
  • Sex of child
  • Father's name and address (town land or street name/house number)
  • Mother's name and maiden name
  • Father's occupation
  • Name, address and 'qualification' (relationship) of informant.
  • Date registered
  • Name of registrar.
  • Superintendent Registrar's District
  • County

The certificates are always produced by an official registration office and can be validated at any time.

What is Public Records?

Under Ireland law, birth certificates are known as Public Records which means that any person can apply for a copy of any certificate, providing that they know the details of the birth that is required. This can be helpful for both government and legal services needing proof of birth, as well as family history (genealogy) researchers looking to discover new ancestors. Please note however that where we believe an application to be connected with an attempt to obtain information for the purposes of identity fraud, the application may be rejected and details passed to the relevant police authority.

Adopted Child Birth Certificate

If the child has subsequently been adopted, the birth certificate can only be obtained if the original birth name of the child is known. We cannot issue a birth certificate under an adopted name, unless the adopted name is the same as the birth name. In these cases, you should apply for an Adoption Certificate instead. The birth certificate of an adopted person will be written on showing that the birth certificate is now out of date as it has been superseded by the adoption. Therefore it will rarely be needed for any official purpose, with the Adoption Certificate replacing the birth certificate for official purposes.



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