3rd April 1995
General Register Office (Dublin) celebrates 150th anniversary of Civil Registration

With a reception held at its Lombard Street West, Dublin, premises, the General Register Office (Ireland) today marked the 150th anniversary of the beginning of civil registration in Ireland. It was on the 1st April 1845 that the Marriage Act 1844 came into operation and from that date forward all civil, non-Catholic & Jewish marriages have been civilly recorded. Because of the Catholic Church’s unwillingness to accept what it saw as state interference in its affairs, it was not until January 1864 that marriages solemnised by the Catholic clergy was also entered on to the civil register. Also from January 1864 all births and deaths were registered too. The occasion of this important anniversary was marked by the unveiling of a plaque and the publishing of a booklet entitled Registering The People – 150 Years of Civil Registration.