Court records contain information about people who were involved in litigation or other court matters. Most court records provide lists of people who served as defendants, plaintiffs, jurors, or witnesses. Court records may provide these individuals' residences, occupations, physical descriptions, and family relationships.

Irish court records are broadly classed as temporal or ecclesiastical. The temporal courts include the Courts of Chancery, Exchequer, King's Bench, Common Pleas, and individual county courts. The ecclesiastical courts had jurisdiction over ecclesiastical issues, matrimony, and probate.

Margaret Dixson Falley, Irish and Scotch-Irish Ancestral Research (see “For Further Reading”) provides a good description of court records and lists repositories and published inventories of court records. Many of the published inventories she notes are available at the Family History Library. They are listed in the Locality Search of the catalog under the following headings:

IRELAND - ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIESIRELAND - ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES - INDEXESIRELAND - ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES - INVENTORIES, REGISTERS, CATALOGS

The Family History Library has few court records. Court records available at the library are listed in the Locality Search of the catalog under the following headings:

IRELAND - COURT RECORDSIRELAND, [COUNTY] - COURT RECORDS

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