John Gibney

But funnily enough, in 1926, 26,000 people emigrated to the US alone.

So immigration would have been whittling down the population.

And a lot of those people, I mean, there's a photograph we have in the book

of a rally in Liverpool in 1948, you know, held by the Eamon de Valera trying to drum up support for an anti-partition campaign.

But if you look at the ages of the people in the photo, overwhelmingly women, it's hard not to think that some of them are on a census form in 1926, that they were of an age where they'd been born in Ireland

and then would have emigrated to Britain because Britain began to take over as the main source for Irish immigrants in the 20s onwards.

So the census form is going to capture not just people who remained in Ireland, but many people who would have left and went overseas.

And there's a couple of cases, instances of that within the book itself.

Very much so.

You know, I do think that, especially after the decade of centenaries, there can be an emphasis to frame Irish history in terms of politics, you know, and that's, we're not the only country that does this, but we kind of try to get the politics out of the way.

There's a couple of politicians that pop up in it, you know, I mean, your friend, Eamon de Valera gets a mention.

Because he would have filled out his census form in 1926.

Now, at the same time, in South Dublin, not too far from where we are, actually.

Now, on the same day, Kevin O'Higgins of Cummingale, the then Minister for Justice, would have filled out a form on the same day.

Now, they filled out the same document on the same night.

Eamon de Valera retired from public life in about 50 years after he did that.

Kevin O'Higgins was shot dead within 15 months, you know, and neither of them could have had any inkling of what the future brought for them.

So, you know, politicians pop up, but they pop up just as anyone else, you know.

And what this does is it captures a particular moment.

So we left the politics to one side.