John Gibney

Which is not what people would probably have imagined.

Absolutely not.

You know, we think of the Irish Free State very often as a fairly monocultural society, you know, and say, OK, 92% Catholic in that sense, you know, you could say aspects of it were.

But if you think that every town and village would have had someone with a different accent to somebody else, and even they can tell you stories, you know, like one detail about the census is that if you were on a ship,

you know, that was docked in an Irish harbour port, you were recorded.

So there's six Egyptian sailors recorded on a ship in Cork on the census night.

There was one family that I found particularly interesting to look at, a family called Danker, living in County Cavan.

And they all, you know, they were listed as, you know, listed as, say, dealers and fetters, you know, mattress merchants, if you look around the broader society.

Then you would have...

Different nationalities to be found throughout the state.

I mean, the Protestant population declined by just over 30% in those 15 years.

And the census form does, or the census reports, I should say, the assessment of the data, says that basically, well, World War I was a factor there.

the withdrawal of the British garrison would have been a big factor, like not just British service personnel, but their families.

But that was an element of that that couldn't be fully accounted for, you know.

And one of the essays in the book is by Andy Bielenberg, you know, which makes the case that, you know, there would have been like natural wastage within the Protestant community as well.

The population would have declined.

There would have been some emigration perhaps arising from the revolution years, not as much as has been alleged.

But it's one of these questions that, you know, the census returns can give us some indication of where people were.

You know, did they move somewhere else?

Were they still there in 1911?