In the 1970s and early 1980s there was an upsurge in interest in roots and ancestor tracing. In Ireland this interest increased demand for the use of records in national repositories and also became manifest in local heritage centres and private repositories throughout the country. The Clare Heritage Centre was one of the first community based local heritage centres to act on the increased demand for genealogy. Copies of public records were supplied by Dr. Chris O’Mahony of the Mid-West Archive in Limerick and in 1979 the Corofin school teacher Mr. Naoise Cleary retired and devoted himself to the development of a genealogy centre servicing enquiries for Co. Clare through the use of indexed parish records.
By the early 1980s, drawing on Corofin’s and Limerick’s example, a growing number of local groups in every part of the country had begun similar indexing schemes. In 1984 many of these groups, in association with individuals who were interested in this work and in genealogy generally, came together to form the Irish Family History Society. The Society saw its role as developing standard procedures for indexing records and facilitating the development of contacts and links between the various parties.
Gradually the indexing centres came to recognise that they shared a range of concerns and interests that could best be furthered by an umbrella organisation dedicated to catering for the needs of local genealogy centres. The Irish Family History Co-operative emerged, which later, in consultation with the Companies Office, changed its name to the Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF).
The centres recognised that to meet the demand for genealogical research from the Irish Diaspora, an all-island network of centres would be required. When the centres from Northern Ireland joined the IFHF as full members such a network became a realistic proposition. The IFHF became a cross-border network of locally based genealogy centres representing and serving all traditions on the island of Ireland and the wider Diaspora.
The IFHF had a vision of a comprehensive family history research service that would require not just the participation of the island’s two major traditions but also the active co-operation of all the major churches right down to parish and local level. A plan for realising the vision was drawn up and negotiation with private record holders resulted in access to most of the baptismal, marriage and death records of all the Churches being granted to member centres.
In 1988 a government initiative saw the setting up of a tourism Task Force, which had a Roots and Tourism sub-committee. This sub-committee had a wide membership drawn from An Taoiseach’s Department, tourism agencies, national repositories, commercial genealogists and local genealogy centres. Its brief was to explore how genealogy could contribute more to the tourism sector.
The Irish Genealogy Project (IGP) came to the attention of government through the work of the Taoiseach’s Task Force. It was soon perceived to represent a genuine opportunity to extend and upgrade genealogy as a tourism product. The importance of genealogy to tourism has been recognised by inclusion in two subsequent major tourism plans.
The Northern Ireland government, in the form of the Central Secretariat, became involved and an ad-hoc management group, co-ordinated by An Taoiseach’s Department, and containing representatives of the two governments and their tourism and training and employment agencies, public repositories and the Irish Family History Foundation, emerged to progress the IGP. This management group conducted negotiations with commercial genealogists represented by APGI and AUGRA and eventually formed Irish Genealogy Limited (IGL) with representation from the public sector, the IFHF and the commercial genealogists’ associations. IGL was registered as a company in 1993 and is a product development and marketing vehicle for genealogical research services. The primary goal of the IGL is to generate economic activity and employment throughout the island of Ireland by boosting roots tourism.