Sir, – One hundred years ago, Ireland had the best genealogical records in the world, in the form of the 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 census returns.
The enumerators gathered personal information on the entire population: name, address, age, occupation, and family relationships were all recorded.
The entire collection was destroyed in an explosion and fire in the opening encounter of the Civil War, on June 30th, 1922.
Our census returns would have enabled descendants of emigrants to reconnect without difficulty to their Irish ancestry. Had they survived, it would have been possible to name every man, woman and child who died or fled the country during the Great Famine.
After the statistical information has been extracted from the 2022 census returns, the forms will be locked up for a century, with no access possible.
The only value they will have, will be to enable those living in 2122 to trace their ancestors. I would suggest that we make that task easier for them by using the “Time Capsule” section to record as much family history as can be squeezed in.
You can be the one to introduce your ancestors to your descendants!
– Yours, etc,
TONY McCARTHY,
Sidney Park,
Cork.
Sir, Alec Quinn (Letters, March 15th) asks “Can we not design a simple question on a form to give accurate statistics?”.
The sex question in Census 2022 is as simple as it has been since sex began to be collected in the census in 1851.
Census 2022 asks “What is your sex?” and provides the only two possible answers; male and female.
It is the Central Statistics Office who have made answering this question unnecessarily complex. The preposterous suggestion that people who feel uncomfortable answering this question accurately should deliberately spoil their response by ticking both boxes and the CSO will then randomly assign them a sex, makes a mockery of the accuracy of the data in the census.
I suspect future generations studying this valuable historic record will wonder what on earth the CSO were thinking.
– Yours, etc,
AMANDA HARRIS,
Kilpedder,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – In relation to the question of census night raised by Garvan Kelly (Letters, March 14th) might I suggest that taking the time to go to census.ie would be equivalent to sending a letter to your fine publication?
From a 21st-century citizen of Ireland.
– Yours, etc,
PAUL ALEXANDER,
Lusk, Co Dublin.
Sir, – My census man tells me that so far only two out of 1,300 households requested the Irish version of the census form. What should that tell us!
– Yours, etc,
MICHAEL FOLEY,
Dublin 6.