Author Archives: John O'Brien

Eamon de Valera once said: “whenever I wanted to know what the Irish people wanted I had only to examine my own heart and it told me straight off what the Irish people wanted.” Nowadays he would have opinion polls … Continue reading →

Source: Census of Ireland 1841-2016.  Note: Tourists and visitors were included from 1841-1936 and 1971. British military included 1841-1911. Rest are “Usually Resident” or “De Jure” Population.  Ireland was long a place many wanted to leave. Only recently has it … Continue reading →

While Ireland’s population collapsed after the Famine and continued to decline into the 20th century, the total Irish-born population was obviously more stable. In the 1880-90s about 40% of those born in Ireland had emigrated. The emigrant stock did fall … Continue reading →

Sources: Commission on Emigration; Reports of the Register-General; CSO; NISRA The graphs above use two sources. First, the emigration statistics are from the Commission on Emigration (for 1825-1850) and Irish Register-General (for 1851-1913) [1]. Emigration (or “gross emigration”) is expressed … Continue reading →

TL;DR: This is a rather long and tedious post about a long and tedious political controversy in Ireland. The short answer is that water charges were proposed early on in the economic crisis. They were of domestic origin, not externally … Continue reading →

Sources: UK: ONS Northern Ireland: NISRA Scotland: National Records of Scotland (1951-1981) and (1981-2014) Republic of Ireland: CSO Not included in the graph, but StatWales has recent estimates for Wales. Economic and social statistics are usually best illustrated comparatively. A country … Continue reading →

Preliminary results for Census 2016 were released on 14th July by the Central Statistics Office of Ireland (CSO). The initial results include estimates for country and county population, net migration, and housing. More detailed stats will be available from March/April … Continue reading →

In November 2015, the BBC and RTE jointly carried out a poll and programme on a united Ireland. The poll, carried out by Behavioural and Attitudes, asked a thousand people in Northern Ireland and a thousand in the Republic about the … Continue reading →

Sources: W.E. Vaughan and A.J. Fitzpatrick, Irish Historical Statistics: Population 1821-1971 (1978) ; CSO ; and NISRA If blurry, it is also posted on Twitter and Imgur. The population numbers are for the island of Ireland. This is for continuity (and simplicity!), as … Continue reading →

Dublin Opinion was a satirical magazine published in Ireland from 1922 to 1968. Founded by Arthur Booth, Thomas Collins and Charles E. Kelly (CEK), it lampooned Irish society in the decades after independence. Both Collins and Kelly were also civil servants while publishing cartoons, … Continue reading →