Government set to release 1926 census at a cost of €5m
Its website will go live on the 18th April 2026, making available for the first time, the personal information relating to the almost 3m people living in Ireland on that night 100 years ago.
It will be fully digitised, searchable and freely available online, with the aim of providing universal and simultaneous public access, Media Minister Patrick O'Donovan told Cabinet.
The 100 year old Census only covers the counties of the Irish Free State, whereas the 1901 and 1911 censuses were for the 32 counties.
The 1926 Census is made up of 2,496 bound volumes containing 700,000 household returns and about 70,000 enumerators' sheets giving details of houses and buildings in each townland.
Details of employers were captured for the first time and households could also fill their Census forms, for the first time, in Irish.
However, due to literacy levels in rural and Irish speaking areas, many Irish-speakers had their returns filled in by the enumerators, who at the time were members of An Garda Síochána in English.
There are only 2000 returns in Irish in the 2026 Census.
The National Archives and the CSO have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding that allows the National Archives to work on the cataloguing, conservation, digitisation and transcription of the returns to enable release in April 2026.
Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh called on the Government to make every effort to find what he said is the lost returns of the first census by the Free State which was carried out across 11 counties in the west and south of the country in 1925.
'The first Census, albeit partial, carried out by the Free State in fact took place a year previously in the summer of 1925, and was conducted by An Garda Síochána on behalf of Coimisiún na Gaeltachta who were trying to identify the number of Irish speakers by district,' he said
'It covered districts across 11 counties including Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon, Galway, Clare, Limerick, Kerry, Cork, Tipperary, and Waterford.'
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