Friday 18 July 2014

New GRO records section of IrishGenealogy is offline

Two weeks on from its launch, the Civil Records section of IrishGenealogy.ie has disappeared! I've no idea where it's hiding, or the reason for this sudden departure from our screens. The dedicated channel url returns a 404 error page.

I became aware of it a couple of hours ago, and I'm awaiting a response from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltact (AHG), but I've been told via Twitter that the section has been on the missing list since yesterday, which is rather worrying.

When the Church Records section has taken an unauthorised holiday in the past (it's happened a few times), the AHG team have always been very quick at restoring it. Whether that'll be repeated this time remains to be seen.

I'll post any update here.

UPDATE 17:25 - Web admins have updated home page to advise that the Civil Records are temporarily unavailable. While this doesn't tell us anything new, it does at least confirm that the message has got through and they're aware of the problem. Let's hope this means they're working to restore it, rather than packing up for the weekend. (May as well work on, guys and gals... no sultry summer evenings forecast for Kerry this weekend!)

UPDATE, Monday 21 July
: Gird your loins. Bad news.