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Irish Genealogy News says that project funding for the digitisation of Church of Ireland (Protestant) registers has been received from the Irish government - https://www.irishgenealogynews.com/2018/09/church-of-ireland-parish-registers-to.html

This is fantastic news not just for researchers with CofI ancestors. As the Established Church until 1870, there are records of people of many denominations in the collection.

Can't wait!

In Ireland the situation is generally different.

The National Archives of Ireland and findmypast.ie entered into a commercial licence agreement for the Landed Estates Rentals, prison registers and petty sessions /dog licences registers. as far as I know these are the only National Archives of Ireland collections subject to an exclusive licence deal. These collections are not available anywhere else, not even on the NAI site, so there is no competition. It was a commercial agreement, so presumably both parties benefit financially, according to the terms. That's fine. I have no problem with it. Researchers using findmypast would assume some such financial agreement was in place.

It's very different to the deal with other National Archives of Ireland collections. The National Archives of Ireland has its own site giving free access to these collections -

    Census of Ireland, 1901 and 1911, and pre-1901 survivals
    Census Search Forms, 1841 – 51
    Tithe Applotment Books, 1823 – 37
    Soldiers’ Wills, 1914 – 1918
    Calendars of Wills and Administrations, 1858 – 1922
    Prerogative and diocesan copies of some wills and indexes to others, 1596 – 1858
    Diocesan and Prerogative Marriage Licence Bonds Indexes, 1623 – 1866
    Catholic qualification & convert rolls, 1700 – 1845
    Valuation Office house, field, tenure and quarto books 1824 – 1856
    Shipping agreements and crew lists, 1863 – 1921
    Will Registers 1858 – 1900

These exact same records are also available free on findmypst.ie and (some of them, at least) on familysearch. The deal is that these collections must be free to access. No licence fee was charged, no money is paid to the National Archives when the collections are accessed.

The only till ringing is findmypast's as they rope in the beginner to pay a subscription for records that the company is obliged to offer free of charge. The fact these free records include some of the most basic and important records in findmypast's Irish collection makes this marketing ploy all the more cynical.

I don't have a problem with a business making money from records. I have a problem with a business roping in the unwary to subscribe to free records.

The only links I can see on that Townland Valuation Translator site are to askaboutireland and to findmypast's Valuation Books collection. They're both free. All the collections that are free on the NAI site are free on findmypast, although as an earlier poster said, findmypast keep this quiet.

I agree that it might have been easier to link to the Valuation Office Books on the NAI site rather than findmypast, which requires registration, but the findmypast search engine (name variants) is much better.

BTW, the links to findmypast are straight links, so the Translator site owner isn't making any money from them.

These collections will be launched online on 28 April, according to Clare Santry's Irish Genealogy News at http://irish-genealogy-news.blogspot.com/2014/04/exclusive-countdown-to-pre-1901-irish.html 

Been waiting years for them.

I haven't seen any IGI records in the collection I'm using (at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=collectionDetails&c=fs%3A1408347).  Is this one no longer recommended?

When was the amalgamated collection launched? Could you let me know the URL?

Many thanks