Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland was created through a five-year State-funded program of research entitled ‘Beyond 2022'.  It is funded by the Government of Ireland under Project Ireland 2040 through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. 

 Led by researchers at Trinity College Dublin, the program "combines historical investigation, archival discovery, conservation and technical innovation to re-imagine and recreate, through digital technologies, the archive lost on June 30th, 1922, in the opening engagement of the Civil War".

Many genealogists with Irish family history have mourned the loss of records that were the result of the Dublin Records Office fire.  Combined with the destruction of the historic Irish censuses, the loss has made the task of researching Irish ancestors more difficult.

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is an open-access resource, freely and permanently available online to all those interested in Ireland’s history at home and abroad. The website states that "our extensive and growing treasury of digitized records—scattered over space and time, but now reunited on-screen—brings ordinary lives buried in official documents back into the light". 

By 2022, over 70 archives, libraries and societies in Ireland, Britain and the United States have formally joined the enterprise to bring the destroyed Record Treasury back to life.