General Register Office (Northern Ireland)
The General Register Office is responsible for the civil registration of births, deaths, marriages, civil partnerships and adoptions as well as administering marriage and civil partnership law in Northern Ireland. The GRO is within the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, which in turn is part of the Northern Ireland Executive's Department of Finance. Its main office is at Colby House, Stranmillis Court, Belfast.
Registration indexes held by GRONI
- births registered from 1 January 1864 in what is now Northern Ireland
- adoptions recorded in the Adopted Children Register Northern Ireland from 1 January 1931
- registered non-Roman Catholic marriages from 1 April 1845 and all registered marriages from 1 January 1864
- civil partnerships registered in Northern Ireland from 5 December 2005
- deaths registered from 1 January 1864 in what is now Northern Ireland
- World War II death indexes from 1939 to 1945
Access to records
Life event certificates can be ordered online, by telephone or by post, with a form downloaded from the site. Applications for collection in person may only be made at the General Register Office in Belfast, with delivery options of third working day for the basic fee, and same day, usually within 30 minutes, for a higher fee.Online resources
Since April 2014, parts of the registers can be searched on the office's website, with a basic record available for 50p, and a full scan for £2.50.For data protection reasons, records available only include:
- birth records over 100 years old
- marriage records over 75 years old
- death records over 50 years old