Next Thursday, 8 September, will be a red-letter day for Irish genealogy.
The General Register Office's historical birth, marriage and death registers will be launched online on that date, joining the GRO Index and a collection of church records on www.IrishGenealogy.ie. Further details will be released early next week. For now, this is all the information being made public.
When this move was first mooted, back in July 2014, it came with an assurance that these records would be accessible free of charge. Subsequent intervention should also have made us quite certain that the records will be subject to the 100-75-50-years rule ie only those births more than 100 years old, marriages more than 75 years ago, and deaths 50 years ago.
I'll bring more news when it's available.
(September looks like it's going to see a bumper delivery for Irish genealogy. Those other record collections I've mentioned rather too many times will be along before the month is out, too.)
UPDATE: 7 September: The updated database has been launched a day early. See my blogpost for the latest updates.