Ireland Birth Certificate
UK GRO Certificates provides a fast and simple service to obtain an official Birth
Certificate.
We provide only the Long/Full version Birth Certificates
and these can be used when applying for a Passport, driving
licence, job application or providing proof of age when claiming a pension.
We offer three types of service
- Regular Service
We aim to despatch Certificate within 8 to 10 working days.
- Rapid Service (Recommended)
If you need record index search to find the match of your details and certificate, we offer a Rapid Service where the certificate is despatched within 4 to 5
working days with the search results for future reference.
- Urgent Service
If you need a certificate urgently, we offer a fast Urgent service where the certificate
is despatched within 2 working days.
96%* of our customers confirm that they are satisfied with our service and would
recommend it to others and we hope you will also. So that you can make an informed
decision when ordering, please be aware that there are other certificate ordering
services available and that costs do vary.
Ireland Birth Certificate Cost (per certificate)
A range of service levels are available to suit your requirements.
-
Birth Certificate - Regular service for £28.90 (Despatched within 8 to 10 working days)
-
Birth Certificate - Rapid service (Recommended) for £36.50 (Despatched within 4 to 5 working days)
-
Birth Certificate - Urgent service for £48.50 (Despatched within 2 to 3 working days)
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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'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 super ceded by the adoption. Therefore it will rarely be needed for any official
purpose, with the Adoption Certificate replacing the birth certificate for official
purposes.