Response to

Civil Registration - Delivering Vital Change

By the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations

The Council for Irish Genealogical Organisations (CIGO) is an umbrella group representing the genealogical community within Ireland (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) and worldwide. It grew out of the 'GRO User's Group' formed in the early 1990's. It represents almost all of the island of Ireland's societies and organisations involved in genealogical research as well as a number of others based in the English-speaking world. With so many Irish people having family links to the United Kingdom, there is a very strong Irish interest in that country's civil registration records.

Chapter 6 - Privacy and access to registration records

Accessing registration records:

101 - Do the proposals maintain the necessary protection for those affected?

What protection needs to be maintained? For those referred to in the records or for those whose rights to view the records are about to be taken away? The Minister appears to be trying to restrict access to some details found in civil registers of birth, death & marriage under the guise that to do so would be to help stamp out fraud. The Minister's privacy arguments are illustrated by some extremely weak examples. The question begs, what proof does the Minister have that data in civil registers is being widely used for the purposes of fraud? What other ways to combat fraud have been investigated other than by imposing a blanket restriction on access? Also, where is the evidence of the public outcry to restrict access to data in order to protect privacy?

102 - Do the proposals prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom that he or she might reasonably expect to continue?

Very clearly, the answer is yes! The imposition of restrictions on the information available from 'modern' register entries will greatly disadvantage many law firms, legal searchers, family historians and other researchers. Addresses, occupations and causes of death are the very pieces of information that are needed to establish whether or not a record is that which is sought. On page 105 of Civil Registration - Delivering Vital Change , reference is made to the public being able to " use other sources to confirm that the record they have identified is, in fact, the one they require ". As the records (at present) which are to be restricted are those compiled less than one hundred years ago, then the question must be asked as to which 'other records' the Minister is referring to? Of comparable status to civil registration data, there are virtually no other 'national' records available to the general public. The only obvious source would be electoral registers, and these provide no personal information about an individual and in any case they are arranged by address with no central names index.

As it is suggested that applicants will have to demonstrate their relationship to the subject of the record concerned in order to obtain a full copy of the record, then this presumes that everyone in society knows who their relatives are and how they are related to one another. It is unfortunate, but the average person on the street does not know, for example, their own grandmother's maiden surname or what became of her siblings. In such an instance, even though an applicant may know that a family relationship exists, they may find that as they cannot demonstrate the relationship they are denied access to the very record which would help them learn the nature of the family connection!

In a legal context, it is virtually impossible to define a 'family group' and even if this can be done, the end result will simply create its own problems. For example, with a set definition of a 'family group', a man aged about 30 will have a much differing set of relations falling into his 'family group' than would his 80 year old grandmother. The effect of this would be that the grandmother might have rights of access to records that the grandson has no right to. Grandmother would have right of access to the records relating to her siblings, but likely the grandson would have no right to the same records, as his grandmother's siblings would likely have been born within the last one hundred years. In this instance, if the grandmother then applied for the records on behalf of her grandson, for him to use in family research, would she have committed an offence?

As the proposals state that only the subject of the record (or their next of kin if deceased) will have the power to authorise another person to access the restricted information, this means that any person who is unable to conduct their own research will in future not even be able to commission another person or organisation to do it for them. This effectively means that for those who die without known next-of-kin nobody will be entitled to undertake any research to try to locate their relations as there are no known relations to ask for the permission required. This is plainly a farce!

Further, in the case of a death record, the informant, whose name, address and relationship to the deceased are noted in the record, might not be the deceased's actual (or closest) next-of-kin. In such an instance, the informant's data could be made public by the deceased's executors or next-of-kin giving permission to a third party to access the full data in the death record.

The Minister suggests that the proposed 100-year restriction reflects the majority opinion expressed in 1999 in response to Registration - modernising a vital service . This is simply not the case. Only 40% of respondents expressed the view that there should be any kind of restriction, and of those half favoured a 75-year rule. Of the 40% suggesting any type of restriction, only 46% suggested 100 years. This equates to fewer than 20% of all respondents, which is far from a 'majority opinion' and in fact, the true majority opinion was that 60% of respondents favoured no restriction at all.

103 - The proposals impose a number of new burdens. We would welcome your views on whether the tests of proportionality, fair balance and desirability are satisfied in respect of these new burdens

Who will be responsible for withdrawing microfilms of (church copy) civil marriage registers currently held in local archives? In almost every instance it will be found that a roll of microfilm holds the records of baptism, marriage and burial of a number of churches or chapels. Will archivists be expected to resolve the problem by cutting out the offending portions of films? If these proposals are to be implemented then this will surely be the only solution.

Whatever definition of 'family' is arrived at, a considerable burden will be placed on any organization, including the GRO, in applying the access framework. CIGO is concerned that those charged with the task of deciding who is a family member (and therefore entitled to full information from register entries) may likely not have the knowledge or training to assess the validity of any documentary evidence presented to them. And what form might this documentary evidence take? One can hardly expect the applicant to include civil registration certificates in their 'basket' of proofs of identity! Private reports compiled for legal purposes could not be allowed to rest solely upon GRO staff members' judgement as to whether a link can be made between a birth, marriage and/or death record.

Data sharing and data transfer

107 - Do the proposals prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom that he or she might reasonably expect to continue?

Yes, very clearly they do. There should not be differing levels of access, as there are not differing levels of citizenship . The onus must be upon the Minister to clearly establish that there is a need to introduce restrictions of access to records. Further, the Minister must justify the cost of implementing the screening process that will be required in order to establish which applicants have the right of full access . Please also refer to our comments in 103.

Historic records

113 - The proposals impose a number of new burdens. We would welcome your views on whether the tests of proportionality, fair balance and desirability are satisfied in respect of these new burdens

CIGO applauds the decision to allow those records designated as 'historic' to be made available at places other than the GRO and local registration offices. Given this, in future the GRO is unlikely to want to be so heavily involved with those seeking access to such material. However, CIGO is very concerned that local archives will not have the space or the financial resources to cope with any registers transferred to them by local registration offices. The outcome then might be that far from there being greater access, it might actually prove that access becomes more difficult.

114 - Do you have any views on the costs and savings identified?

It appears to CIGO that the Minister has not given enough thought to the costs which will be involved in administering and, more importantly, policing the proposed new access restrictions.

Chapter 7 - The registers

Proposals for handling existing registers

117 - Do the proposals prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom that he or she might reasonably expect to continue?

Please refer to our comments in 102 above.

118 - The proposals impose a number of new burdens. We would welcome your views on whether the tests of proportionality, fair balance and desirability are satisfied in respect of these new burdens

Please refer to our comments in 103 above.

Supplementary questions

Accessing registration records :

S6 - Do you have any views on the proposed definitions of family in respect of accessing registration records?

We reject outright the argument that there is any need for the restriction of access to civil records . A much simpler system to protect citizens and halt fraud would be to insist and require that all and every applicant should show high quality proof of identity before being given access to full data register entries. A note of the applicant's identity, and the record(s) they obtained copies of, should then be kept on file for a specified period of time.

Further, as very few people in society actually need to have the data in their civil records 'restricted' then a much cheaper and effective alternative to the proposals to restrict all data (compiled less than a specified number of years ago) would be to establish a procedure whereby a simple court order (or directive by the Registrar General) could be used to allow those requiring anonymity to have certain fields of data in their civil records generally restricted. For instance, where a (divorced) woman needs protection from a violent (former) husband, then such a system would work far better than one which restricted access to full data only to those defined as being within the 'family group'. If the Minister's proposals go through, then whether violent or not, the husband would quite clearly fall within the context of being with in the 'family group' and would therefore have access to the full data .

23rd October 2003