Monday 26 September 2011

Certificate of Irish Heritage is live


If you're planning to apply for a Certificate of Irish Heritage, you should get yourself over to the official website – www.heritagecertificate.ie – to start your preparations. Applications will be accepted from Friday 30th September.

Full details of eligibility and how to apply can be read or downloaded from the site, but here they are, in brief:

Eligibility: All those not born on the island of Ireland who can show an ancestral connection to a specific Irish ancestor.

Documentation required: Scanned image of your ID document; copy of an historical document which shows a direct link to Ireland ie bmd certs, land or census records, wills, ships manifest or immigration records; and the names of people in the line of descent between you and your ancestor. (You can have two ancestors named on the certificate, if you wish, but you need to provide supporting documents for only one of them.)

Certificates cost €40, payable by MasterCard or Visa. If you choose to have your certificate framed, the additional cost is €54 (there's a good choice of frames and certificate designs).

When the idea for a Certificate of Irish Heritage was first mooted, it was suggested that some kind of tourist discounts or incentives would be part of the deal, so as to encourage travel to Ireland. As far as I can tell from the website, there are no such incentives in the package.