ON THE RECORD
The Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations has launched an online petition calling for the early release of the census returns
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On the anniversary of the founding of the Irish Free State, the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations (CIGO) launched a petition calling for the Irish government to release the 1926 census returns in advance of the standard 100-year limit.
On 6 December 1921 the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, bringing an end to the Irish War of Independence and providing for the establishment of the Irish Free State, which was founded exactly a year later on 6 December 1922.
On 6 December 2017 the CIGO launched an online petition proposing releasing the 1926 census as part of the celebrations to mark the Free State’s 100th anniversary in 2022. At the time of going to press 2,949 had already signed the petition.
Colm Cochrane, chair of the CIGO, commented, “We hope with the launch of an online petition calling for the release of the 1926 census that genealogists and historians will rally to the call; that they will not only support it, but share it, too, on social media, and lobby politicians.”
The petition, addressed to Leo Varadkar, the new Taoiseach of Ireland, and Josepha Madigan, the heritage minister, notes that the 1926 data, from the first census of the Free State, is significant because “it represents a snapshot of Ireland at the end of a very turbulent decade in its history”.
The country had undergone population upheaval because of the First World War, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War, as well as a high rate of emigration.
Ireland’s 1993 Statistics Act introduced a 100-year embargo on releasing census data compiled since the founding of the state. However, the 1901 and 1911 census returns were both released in 1961.
The CIGO has been arguing that the census should be released ahead of the current January 2027 set date for a number of years.
It supported the 2006 Genealogy and Heraldry Bill, which reached its second reading in the Seanad Éireann (Irish Senate) and would have allowed for the release of the 1926 Census by making it available after 75 years.
In 2012 Jimmy Deenihan, who was heritage minister at the time, announced a government commitment to releasing the census data by 2016, the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising.
However, this date was missed, so the CIGO is now urging the new government to renew its predecessor’s commitment to the early release, which has also been proposed in a new private member’s bill in the Seanad.
Early release would require a significant process of cataloguing and digitising the records, which are now held in Ireland’s National Archives.
Tracing Irish ancestors is notoriously difficult because the 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 censuses, along with just over half of the Church of Ireland registers, court records and most wills and testamentary records, were destroyed when the Public Records Office in Dublin caught fire at the end of June 1922 during the Irish Civil War.
The CIGO also pointed to the successful release of the 1939 Register in England and Wales by the UK National Archives in 2015, with the personal data of individuals released on a rolling basis 100 years after they were born, as a precedent.
The Irish Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht did not respond to requests for comment from Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine before we went to press.
To view the petition at the change.org website, visit bit.ly/census-release.
We hope with the launch of a petition calling for the release that genealogists and historians will rally to the call