CIGO letter to GRONI

21st August 2006

Dear Ms. Kennedy,

Thank you for your letter dated the 15th inst. attached to your e-mail bearing the same date.

Having read your letter we very much welcome your clarification of GRONI's draft policy as it relates to access to civil records of birth, death and marriage. The issue of such access has been forefront in the minds of those involved in genealogy (both professionally and otherwise) since GRONI issued its first consultation document in late 2003. At that time GRONI's proposal was that access to certain fields of data would in future be restricted where 100 years had not yet elapsed since a record's creation. This was (or possibly still is) the policy being proposed by the GRO in England & Wales (GRO E&W). In 2002, in a conversation with John Hames of GRO E&W, this policy was further explained and it was confirmed that ideally the UK government would like to see it implemented in Northern Ireland too.

In 2003 a representative of CIGO (Steven Smyrl) had three conversations with Annette Gilkeson, of GRONI, in which she confirmed that GRONI's draft policy for modernising Northern Ireland's civil registration service included measures to deny access to information. The data concerned was that relating to addresses, occupations and causes of death in records compiled less than one hundred years ago. A very robust argument in favour of retaining full access to all data in civil registration records (as is currently the case) was submitted in response to the 2003 consultation by CIGO. Two specific reasons were raised at that time. One was that a one hundred year 'closure' rule would be virtually impossible to implement as all records relating to Northern Ireland compiled before 1922 are also available south of the border in the Republic's GRO. The second issue was that all civil registers of birth, death & marriage for Northern Ireland (with their accompanying indexes) are already openly available throughout the LDS Churches' worldwide network of Family History Libraries for the period 1922 to 1959.

It is clear that the views expressed by CIGO in response to the 2003 GRONI consultation have been taken onboard in the drafting of the latest set of proposals and we therefore very much welcome GRONI's clarification of its policy relating to future access to civil records. We confirm our original submission (dated 6th July) in which we expressed our concern about future access to records. Further, in relation to records to be made available at some future date through the medium of the Internet, we reiterate our view that those relating to births should be made available once a maximum of 70 years has elapsed since their creation, likewise 50 years for marriages and 30 years for deaths.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Desmond K. Clarke

Hon. Sec.