Civil (state) registration of births, marriages and deaths began across Ireland in 1864, with non-Roman Catholic marriages registered from as early as 1845. Unlike the parish registers, civil records were kept to a standard national format, which makes them consistent and comparatively easy to read.
Birth, marriage and death certificates each carry their own details — parents and addresses, occupations, witnesses, ages and causes of death — and together they are an essential complement to, and check on, the church registers. The historic indexes and many of the certificates themselves are now available online.