When you buy our self-paced online course, you get a clear, organized roadmap from start to finish. This article walks through one practical example timeline for confirming family details, gathering documents, and preparing your Foreign Birth Registration application.
Note: Timelines can vary based on what documents you may already have on hand, how complex your family situation is, and how quickly record offices process requests.
We designed our course to cut through the confusion and help you find the information you need to complete your application efficiently and with minimal stress. Much of the course focuses on helping you locate your grandparent’s Irish birth record and other Irish vital records, if applicable. This includes utilizing many U.S. genealogical resources, as well as those from Ireland.
Please don’t be intimidated by the number of lessons. The course is comprehensive by design. Once you’ve gathered what we call your Key Family Facts from U.S. records and your existing knowledge, you can skip ahead to Module 4, where we review how to locate Irish vital records. If your family history is more complex, you can rely on the full set of lessons to help you work through trickier family situations.
The final module of our course walks you through the entire Foreign Birth Registration application process in detail. This includes how to:
1. Order U.S. and Irish vital records
2. Complete the online application
3. Compile and prepare all required documents
4. Mail your application to the Irish Government
For U.S. vital record orders, timelines depend on what you already have on hand and how quickly the relevant state, county, or city offices process new requests.
Locating your grandparent’s Irish vital records online is often the most difficult step. However, once you have the necessary details and have submitted your orders for certified copies, Irish record offices typically process and mail them within a few weeks, and they are often faster than many U.S. vital records offices.
Using our course, submitting the online application will be straightforward if you have gathered and prepared the necessary information. Once your online application is complete, you will need to gather and correctly complete all required documents that must be mailed to the Irish Government, including the printed application form generated at the end of the online application process.
Once your required documents are ready, the online submission, final assembly, and mailing can often be completed within a day or two.
This is not rocket science, but there are pitfalls and common points of confusion for people who are not familiar with the process. Our course is carefully designed to make each step clear and help you avoid many of the most common mistakes.
We also strive to include details and advice for more uncommon scenarios – such as how to approach getting certified translations for vital records in another language besides English or Irish. For example, this can matter if your Irish American mother was married in France and her marriage certificate is in French.
Additionally, if you encounter a very unusual situation with your family’s specific case and you need an official answer, we explain how to contact Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs by phone or webchat. Support staff are generally very helpful, responses are typically quick, and yes, they speak English!
