The census won't paint full picture, says ISABEL MORTON

LAST Sunday night, like many other Irish citizens, I set about filling in our census form. Unlike previous occasions, when I would have totally ignored it in the hope that my husband would “do the necessary”, this time around I took personal responsibility for the questionnaire.My new found interest is a direct result of the great number of hours I’ve spent online, investigating details of my family background via the 1901 and 1911 census website (census.nationalarchives.ie).

The mere notion that my great grandchildren might one day research their unfortunate ancestors who had lived through the “Celtic catastrophe” made me realise the importance of providing accurate and honest information.

Of course, it wasn’t good enough for yours-truly to fill in the form and leave it at that. Within minutes of starting on the questions about accommodation, I found myself conjuring up a further selection of questions, which I would have liked included in the census, in the hope that future generations would not experience the frustration I feel when trying to piece together snippets of information on my ancestors’ lives.

Why, for example, does our census form exclude a record of the number of bathrooms in our homes? The recent dramatic increase in the number of bathrooms installed in private homes is an accurate indicator, not just of the current desire for daily ablution, but also of a dramatic increase in our nation’s wealth.

Where the census asks for a count of the number of habitable rooms, it doesn’t ask about the overall size of the property. As most people know the approximate size of their homes in sq ft or sq m, a record of this would be interesting, as room sizes vary considerably, particularly between larger period buildings and the small proportions of many new builds.

And, as there is no formal record of properties that have been extended, other than of those that were obliged to secure planning permission, it would be interesting to have a record of the number of small extensions built and the year in which the building work was completed.

Even the 1901 census enumerators recorded details of the materials used in the construction of walls and roofs, as well as detailing the “class of building” and the “number of windows to the front”, which provides interesting additional information about the properties surveyed.

Perhaps my curiosity in this regard can be attributed to my obsession with property but I suspect many would be interested in other property details, such as whether households had front and back gardens, balconies, terraces or off-street parking.

Farmers were asked to record the number of hectares they farmed but nobody else was asked to report on their private outdoor space, or if indeed they have any.

I would also have included additional questions on sections H3 and H4, which asked whether you owned or rented your property. If the latter, the census asked what type of landlord you rented from and required details of exactly how much you paid in rent. It would have been easy to include a few more searching questions such as: in what year did you buy your property; how much did you pay for it; and, crucially, what sale price do you think your property might achieve if you sold it in 2011?

My disappointment with the census questionnaire continued when I got to the section devoted to questions on individual persons living in each dwelling. I was not the only one who felt frustrated at the missed opportunity to gain accurate information on the way in which our lifestyles have changed as a result of the recession.

Chatting with a friend last Monday morning, she reported that all three of her children had to be listed under the Absent Persons section of the document because they had all left the country. “I had tears blurring my sight as I tried to fill in their details and I was absolutely furious that there was no box to tick for ‘emigrated in search of work’,” she complained.

We went on to discuss a mutual friend who has five adult children, three of whom have emigrated and two who have had to return to living with her, in the original family home. They could no longer afford to live in their own properties and were forced to rent them out, in an effort to cover their mortgage repayments.

Future generations will no doubt look back on this census in amazement and probably come to the conclusion that families in 2011 were so united that the different generations chose to live together under the same roof.

If they only knew the real stories behind the number of apparently happy family units that will appear on our recently completed census forms.

The tragedy is that they won’t because the 2011 census won’t tell them.

* ISABEL MORTONis a property consultant