The first Irish census was taken in 1821, and thereafter censuses were taken at ten-yearly intervals until 1911. The only census records to survive in their entirety are those for 1901 and 1911. The records for 1821–51 were lost in the destruction of the Public Record Office at the beginning of the Civil War in June 1922, those for 1861–71 were destroyed by government order soon after their contents had been converted into statistical information, and those for 1881–91 were pulped in 1918, perhaps to address a shortage of paper during the First World War. The Census Online Project is a partnership between the
National Archives of Ireland and Library and Archives Canada (LAC), who have carried out the digitisation and are engaged in producing the databases to support the digitised images.
