Ireland Research Proves Fruitless

I went in search of more information about my third great grandparents, William Foley and Alice Fitzgerald. I was hoping to discover new data and perhaps, locate their final resting place. We started at the National Library in Dublin where they have a genealogy staff to assist with research. The lady was very nice and when I showed her the research I had already done, informed us that we were already at the edge of the frontier of Irish genealogy records. I had been able to get back as far as 1817 when the marriage of William Foley and Alice Fitzgerald took place. Their records from the churches of marriages and baptisms do not go back much further than this.
This turned out to be the theme of each of our stops to talk with experts and we saw plenty of folks who should know. We visited the Waterford County Museum and talked with the curator. He gave us insights into how to read gravestones that are severely worn by weather. But he also was skeptical that we would find anything. We visited Saint Bartholemew's Church and grave yard in Pilltown. Lots of Foleys were buried there but none that we could identify as our relatives. I think it is most likely that they are buried there. We also visited the librarian in Dungarvan who my cousin Donny had visited long ago. We went to the Waterford Heritage Center. This was the outfit that did the research for me four or five years ago. We even met the researcher who looked up the records back then, John O'Conner. We gave all of these folks everything that we knew and each was impressed with what we had found and thought it unlikely that we would find much more.
The long and the short of it is that we have evidently gotten all of the information that was relatively easy to gather and now we will have to pursue other avenues. My thinking is that I need to go to Boston and try to find the records of the Foleys here before they went back to Ireland around 1800. So thats a topic for consideration when planning next year's vacation.