Hello all, If you have tried to already or have research still to do in Ireland, this letter from the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations will be a very important piece of information for you to be aware of! CIGO's objective is to get the GRO in Ireland to "deposit microfilm copies of the important national archive that are the civil registers of birth, death and marriage, with the accompanying indexes, at The National Library of Ireland." Next step is to get it all online, right???? ;) If you subscribe to any other Irish surnames lists, you might want to pass the information along. Here is the link to the accompanying online petition you can sign and send which must be submitted before February 1, 2000 to be included in what is presented! http://world.std.com/~ahern/petition.htm Jana Black ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations 21 St Brigid's Grove, Dublin 5, Ireland November 1999 Dear Reader, As you may be aware earlier in the year CIGO co-ordinated a public meeting, attended by over one hundred people, to discuss the inadequate and deteriorating service supplied to the general public by the Department of Health & Children at the General Register Office, Lombard Street, Dublin. Despite intense lobbying by CIGO and various other organisations and individuals over the last number of years the Department has done almost nothing to enable its staff at the GRO to supply the quality of service the GRO knows is so desperately needed. The Public Meeting was attended by many focused and articulate individuals who voiced imaginative and pragmatic solutions to the problems encountered at the GRO. The salient points regarding the Department's provision of service to the public in the short term are as follows: there is simply too little space provided for the number of people needing access to the indexes; the availability to the public of only one set of index volumes leads to a situation where the volume a researcher requires is likely already in use; there is never enough staff in the Public Search Room to assist the public; the programme to improve facilities and expand the floor space of the Public Search Room begun in the early months of this year should be completed; to ease congestion in the GRO the Department of Health & Children should present microfilm copies of its civil registers of birth, death and marriage to various national and international bodies and in light of the above the Department should abandon its proposals to increase the public search fees. Shortly CIGO will be completing its initial report, drawn from the conclusions of the CIGO Public Meeting, which is to be presented to the Ministers for Health & Children and Social Welfare and in due course various other interested groups and parties. However, you can help by signing and distributing the attached petition which CIGO hopes will encourage the Minister for Health & Children to present microfilm copies of the GRO's civil registers of birth, death and marriage to the National Library of Ireland where researchers will be able to view them free of charge. The completed petition 'forms', which you are encouraged to photocopy and distribute, should be returned to the secretary of CIGO as soon as possible, but no later than the 1st February 2000. Thanking you for your support, Desmond K. Clarke Hon. Secretary, CIGO