Henry Mallins of Dublin

[mick]

I am researching Henry Joseph Mallins born may 13 1863 in Dublin. Henry was a roman catholic and lived in Ireland until abt 1898 and then moved to London. His occupation was making lenses for telescopes etc which suggests he was university educated and/or served in the military at some time. Before moving to England he married Annie and they had three children probably born in the Dublin area - Ellinor b1890, Henry b1894, and Kathleen b1897.
Henry's parents were involved in the silk trade and i have found a reference in the Dublin 1844 Freemans journal Special Jury Panel of a William Mallins who was a silk mercer (merchant?).
Are there methods that i could research this family online or will i have to look at actual parish records.

[FoggontheTyne]

Researching Irish background on line is difficult. I'm after information on my family who were silk dyers in Dublin and have a full list of ancestors from 1690, but that was only by chance due to a distant relation having done tons of original research over in Ireland.
The best stuff I've been able to come up with is this paper:
http://www.microform.co.uk/guides/R97605.pdf
If you are willing to pay the fee, you can get masses of information from such directories and it looks like it would cover the period you are interested in.
Best of luck.