I have been doing lots of spasmodic research on my various Irish lines, trying to uncover clues in things like the Griffiths valuation, Tithe records and into the more recent 1901 censuses etc. I have been plotting profiles for persons of interest in townlands I am interested in, in the hope that I might be able to connect with others.
It seems to me (and I may be wrong) that there aren't many trees (in the usual places, wikitree, ancestry etc) that are started by people who currently live in Ireland. Are they publishing their ancestry somewhere else?
I suspect if more of the current day people in Ireland attempted to trace back their ancestry and publish it on the sites we usually access, then we might have a greater chance of finding our connections. They have greater access to local records than we do. I know my Thomas Cassidy left two daughters in Ireland. Did they have descendants? Why aren't they looking for me the same way I am looking for them?!?
If there is a site the Irish predominantly use, can someone tell me what it is? If there isn't, how can we get Ireland 'on board' for wikitree and get current day Ireland connected with those of us who have 'Irish Roots'!
If we can't connect to current day lines, then I think that DNA is the only other way to give us clues about our Irish connections in the absence of a lot of traditional records. I would encourage others to take tests like the FTDNA Family Finder (currently on sale). The test has helped me recently identify the name of my g/g/g grandmother, by being able to identify the townland name and then access original church records through a match - when the name was MURPHY from Wexford the most common name in Ireland!