Special census of Gaeltacht regions, 1925

Genealogy, Archaeology, History, Heritage & Folklore

Moderators: Clare Support, Clare Past Mod

Post Reply
pwaldron
Posts: 730
Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2008 9:31 pm
Location: Ballina, Killaloe
Contact:

Special census of Gaeltacht regions, 1925

Post by pwaldron » Thu Oct 01, 2015 1:12 pm

It was mentioned by Philip Fogarty of NUIG in his lecture to Kilrush & District Historical Society on Tuesday 29 September 2015 that a special census of the Gaeltacht was taken in August 1925.

Many genealogists seem to be unaware of this potential source.

The best details of this census that I can find are in the report of Coimisiún na Gaeltachta at
http://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/xmlui/ ... Report.pdf
This commission was appointed on 27 January 1925 was chaired by Risteárd Ua Maolcatha. It arranged with the Department of Justice that during the enumeration by the Gárda Síochána of the Agricultural Statistics in the months of July and August 1925, an enumeration of Population (Irish Speaking and non-Irish Speaking) would be made in counties Donegal and Mayo and parts of Galway, Clare, Kerry, Cork, Waterford, Sligo, Roscommon, Limerick and Tipperary.

It was decided only in the following month, September 1925, to take a general Census of Ireland, the first since 1911, in April 1926.

The 1925 returns were not filled in by individual householders, but there was a `direct enumeration by the Gárda Síochána who carried out their instructions satisfactorily' (p.9).

A number of questions spring to mind about this Special Enumeration of 1925:
  1. Did the Gardaí record the names of all the residents, or just their proficiency in the Irish language?
  2. Have the original records of the enumeration survived?
  3. If so, in what archive are they stored?
  4. Are they covered, explicitly or implicitly, by the Statistics Act of 1993 which retrospectively closed the 1926 census until 2027?
  5. Could they be digitised and made available to genealogists?
  6. The outgoing Irish government elected in 2011 has not had the political will to overrule the officials of the Central Statistics Office and deliver on the commitment in its original Programme for Government to introduce the necessary amending legislation and release the 1926 Census in time for the 1916 centenary events. (See Irish Genealogy News.) Could the government be persuaded instead to facilitate and fund the release of the 1925 special enumeration as a 1916 centenary project?
Comments welcome.

Post Reply