Northern Ireland BMD - online

[kiterunner]

GRONI now has an online system whereby you can search

Link to information:
http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/family-history

Link to search screen:
https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk/home

The password rules are so complicated I reckon I am guaranteed to forget my password, but no doubt it makes it extra secure.

This is what it says is covered:
You will be able to access the following records if you visit GRONI online:
birth records over 100 years old
marriage records over 75 years old
death records (including World War II death records) over 50 years old

You cannot access civil partnership and adoption records online. If you want to view these records you must book an appointment at the public search room or, if you know the details, you can apply online for certificates.

You can do a free search for a name, specifying a 5 year date range (and the error message you get if your date range is too big is pretty confusing) and it will tell you how many matches there are, but you have to buy credits and go onto the actual search screen and repeat your search there, before you can view the actual list of matching results. I don't think your credits actually get used for viewing the results unless you use the "enhanced search", in which case it costs 1 credit to view the results.

You can buy 1 credit on its own for 40p, unlike many sites which force you to buy multiple credits even if you don't want them. I think you can view the actual certificates as long as they are over 100 years old (births), 75 years (marriages) or 50 years (deaths) but it is not very clear how much this will cost, looking at the site. I have seen somewhere that it will cost 5 credits, i.e £2, to view a certificate online.

Don't forget that FamilySearch, ancestry and FMP have transcripts of the Northern Ireland BMD indexes up to 1922, and this is free on FamilySearch.

[kiterunner]

I have finally managed to buy some credits - my first two attempts, using MasterCard, didn't work, but when I tried using a Visa debit card it finally went through. So I can confirm that it doesn't use up any of your credits to view the list of matches, and it costs 5 credits to view the full index entry plus certificate image.

Note that the free searches ignore middle names.

[Merry]

Thanks for investigating, Kate.

[Shona]

It's a bit like Scotland's People in a way as you have to buy credits to view images. Seeing the images rather than transcriptions has been useful for those odd little bits of extra info. You can't really do a wide-ranging search, as far as I can see, because of the restrictive nature of having to specify a range of years rather than a 'search all' facility.

Already spent £20 and forgotten my password once.