Regarding the NI 1939 Register, according to an Assistant Director at PRONI in a conversation I had with him, its format is different to that in England & Wales. There, family information is on the left hand page and medical information on the right. It has therefore been easy to scan the left hand side and ignore that on the right (medical data is all still closed). In Northern Ireland, the medical information is on the same page and mixed in with the personal information and cannot easily be excluded from an on-line version (other than by going through the whole register line by line, a task too time consuming and expensive). Consequently they cannot put it on-line. It has also made any automated scanning and indexing of the names almost impossible. Outside of major towns its compiled by townland, same as many other Irish records, and so the only way of searching it is by townland. And you have to ask PRONI to do that for you. If PRONI find the relevant record, they will redact anything medical and anything relating to someone under 100 or who cannot be shown to be dead.
But the information is provided free because PRONI are committed to making their records available free.
