I'm afraid it is much worse than it appears. If you are doing just one or two searches on spec, or looking to trace families to a specific named couple, the cost of records will now actually be significantly more than the apparent savings on offer.
In the past RootsIreland had a discount scheme if you had several children born to a couple - the more records the cheaper the cost. For example, eleven to fifteen records would costs just 30 Euros. If I look and find 15 kids now, it will actually cost 42 Euros to view the records in the new set up, as I will need 377 credits - 2 credits for the index returns listing the kids (over 2 pages, 10 entries on the 1st, 5 on the second), and then 15 x 25 credits to see the actual records - so 375 credits +2 credits for the searches = 377 credits. The cheapest way I can see to do this is to buy 42 worth of credits - 10 for 73 credits and 32 for 320 credits, giving me a total of 393 credits (so 16 left over). The maths is horrendous and I have written down other examples on a blog post at
http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/rootsireland-makes-search-and-payment.htmlRootsIreland has also disabled the ability to do a parent search at the parish level - it can now only be done at county level. You don't see them advertising that anywhere! This is to me the bigger disaster with the new site - they have regressed the search functions, meaning you may end up paying for more false positives when consulting records.
The basis of the new model appears to be gambling - a gamble that you may need lots of credits as you
might find lost of records - so pay more, get more credits, get a discount. Except that falls completely flat on its face when you end up just finding a single record and then have hundreds of credits to spare!!
It's all a bit of a disgrace really, and Ireland now seriously needs to open up to the idea of competition. I personally hate the idea of being held hostage to my own heritage by a single guardian that feels that it can charge us what it feels like and expect me to just take it.
I would urge all those who are dismayed by the new set up to email them at enquiries[at]rootsireland.ie .
Chris
Moderator Comment: e-mail edited, to avoid spamming and other abuses.
Please replace [at] with @