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The traditional route is to use a form downloaded from the GRO website, choosing between a birth, marriage and death certificate application, as suits. These forms provide for most requests: for those researchers who can supply the GRO reference; for those researchers who don't know the GRO reference for the event and require a search to be made, for those who want a long-form certificate for legal purposes and for those who want a research copy.
On this form you can write in all the details of the event and/or the old-style GRO reference ie Clonakilty 1885 Q2 vol 5 page 235.
The alternative is to use the much simplified combined form available at IrishGenealogy.ie, which does not offer a search option and requires only the event type, name and either the old style GRO reference number, without the district, to be provided, or the newer Group (Registration) ID number ie 1148081. The latter was introduced last year when civil registration records were launched on the site.
These Group ID numbers have not yet been allocated to all records so most researchers will still be using the old-style GRO reference.