Effort to Destroy All Irish Censuses Falls Short

From Yahoo! News:

Ireland-Canada deal will put census online for 70 million

Tue Dec 6, 7:20 AM ET

DUBLIN (AFP) - Details of two 100-year-old Irish censuses are to go online for an estimated 70 million people around the world who claim a connection with the country, Heritage Minister John O'Donoghue revealed.


Under a new cultural agreement between the Irish and Canadian archive offices, all the details of Ireland's census in 1901 and 1911 are to be indexed and made available for free on the Internet.

[snip]

The 1901 census is the earliest surviving such document for all the 32 counties of the island, including the six in British-ruled Northern Ireland.

The data from previous censuses dating back to 1821 were either deliberately destroyed, pulped during World War I because of a paper shortage or were lost in a fire at Dublin's Public Records Office during the country's civil war in 1922.

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