Madam, - Paul Cullen's article "Property valuation of 19th century Ireland free online" (July 22nd) makes reference to the unfortunate disaster that befell Ireland's census records for the years 1821 to 1851 when they were destroyed in the great conflagration that consumed the Public Record Office of Ireland in June, 1922.
However, what befell Ireland's later census records for the period 1861 to 1891 is nothing short of farce! They were routinely destroyed through a bureaucratic muddle in which civil servants in London advised their counterparts in Dublin that original census household schedules should be destroyed. Unfortunately, this advice was given without having first established that while in Great Britain the data in these schedules had been copied into census enumerators' books for future preservation, no such policy was followed in Ireland.
To compensate for this loss the returns for the 1901 and 1911 censuses were opened to public access by the late Charles Haughey in 1961 - only 50 years after the 1911 census had been compiled.
Recently, in this newspaper, the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations (CIGO) and the Genealogical Society of Ireland called for the returns for the 1926 census (the first compiled after the foundation of the State) also to be opened to public inspection. Indeed, in the autumn Fianna Fáil Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú is to publish a short parliamentary Bill in hopes of achieving this goal. CIGO has opened a petition in support of this issue which can be found at www.cigo.ie . - Yours, etc,
STEVEN C SMYRL, MAPGI, FIGRS, Sydenham Terrace, Rathgar, Dublin 6.