Dennis Ahern on CoCork gives us a little more COUNCIL OF IRISH GENEALOGICAL ORGANISATIONS 30th May 2008 'National Library has re-opened Roman Catholic parish registers for Cashel & Emly, Cloyne and Kerry' The National Library of Ireland has finally re-opened public access to the microfilms of the parish registers of the 'closed' dioceses of Cloyne, Kerry & Cashel & Emly. For the past 16 years there has been no public access at all to the microfilms of the registers from the diocese of Cashel & Emly and only limited access to those for Kerry and Cloyne. The issue of access to the microfilms for these dioceses has been a hot issue for many years now and is one that CIGO has raised previously with the Library. The 're-opening' of these microfilms after all these years is terrific news for those who are searching for Catholic ancestors in County Kerry and parts of Counties Tipperary, Limerick and Cork. This is almost better than Christmas! Janet

29th May 2008 National Library has re-opened Roman Catholic parish registers for Cashel & Emly, Cloyne and Kerry. After 16 years of no access, the National Library has finally re-opened public access to the parish registers of the 'closed' dioceses of Cloyne, Kerry & Cashel & Emly. The issue of access to the microfilms of the registers from these dioceses has been a hot issue for many years now and is one that CIGO has raised previously with the Library. However, much of the success in finally getting the films once again open to the public must be attributed to the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland (APGI) and in particular its members Paul Gorry and Maire Mac Conghail and the influence they have both used in recent times. In doing so they highlighted the fact that as far back as 1994 the Library had received legal opinion that the Bishop of Cashel & Emly's claim to own copyright of the registers (and thus the Library's microfilm copies of them) was without legal foundation. An excellent press release about this story can be read on APGI's website