Making an Irish Free State City – Language, immigration & unemployment in 1926

The General Report of the 1926 Census is now digitised now on the Central Statistics Office website. There are many chapters on life and society in the Irish Free State. One insightful section is detailed on the distribution of Irish language speakers.

The number of persons who stated that they could speak Irish was 543,511 in 1926, or 18.3% of the total population. Over the whole period of 45 years from 1881 to 1926 the number of Irish speakers had declined by 41%.

The percentage of Irish speakers was low in the city boroughs. The percentage in 1926 was only 7.5% in Dublin, and this was lower than in any Leinster county.

The percentages in Cork, Limerick, and Waterford were respectively 10.1%, 8.9% and 8.8%, and these were lower than the corresponding figures in any Munster county. As one travelled east Irish speakers become fewer.

The counties with the highest percentages of Irish speakers were Galway (47.4%), Mayo (36.8%), Donegal (34.4%) Kerry (33%), Clare (30.3%), Waterford (30.1%), and Cork (21.1%), all of which border the south or west coast.

There was also a delimitation of areas by the Gaeltacht Commission for the Irish Speaking Districts and the Partly Irish Speaking Districts. Broadly speaking, the Irish-Speaking Districts were defined to be those in which 80% or over of the population could speak Irish, and Partly Irish-speaking Districts were defined by those in which 25-79% of the people could speak Irish.

The Gaeltacht areas were predominantly rural. The Partly Irish-speaking Districts category contained one large town, Galway, with a population of over 14,000, Killarney and Dungarvan, with over 5,000, and seven towns with populations ranging between 1,500 and 5,000 inhabitants.

The Irish Speaking District category contained only one town, Dingle, with more than 1,500 inhabitants. Relative to the population, there had been a marked loss of Irish in the partly Irish Speaking Districts, where only 38% of the population spoke Irish, compared with 48% in 1911.

In the Irish speaking districts, the actual loss was put down to a loss of population more than to a loss of the language amongst the people who remained.

A most striking feature was the high proportion of children who could speak Irish at the school ages. Almost exactly one-third of the Irish speakers were aged less than fifteen years.

One-fifth of those aged 5-9 and two-fifths of those aged 10-14 group could speak the language. The proportion was lower at the 15-19 age bracket. This was partly due to the fact that children were, in 1926, learning more Irish than children of the same age five years earlier.

It was due in some measure due to the loss of the language after young people leaving school in their early teens. At the later ages, on the other hand, substantial declines were recorded, and the percentages increased considerably with age. The decline had been no less than 40% at ages 60 and over.

Themes such as immigration into Ireland also made up one of the central themes explored in the 1926 census.

From 1911 to 1926 residents of the Irish Free State who were born outside the state decreased by 24.3%; those born outside Ireland decreased by 32.9%.

Residents who came from Northern Ireland and from America showed small increases, 0.4% and 0.7% respectively; persons born in England and Wales, Scotland and elsewhere outside Ireland decreased greatly by 42.8%, 16.4% and 26.1% respectively.

Most of the decrease of 26.1% in the latter group was due to the decrease in the population who came from the British dominions other than India. Those born in India increased by 3.3%.

Of the 67,070 persons born outside Ireland, 20,724 lived in Dublin city and its adjoining urban districts, 15,743 in the remaining towns, and 30,609 in rural areas. The following were the percentages of immigrants from each country who in 1926 lived in rural areas in Irish Free State: Russia 2%; India 31%; England and Wales 40%; France 42%; Germany 43%; Northern Ireland 45%; British dominions (other than India) 46%; Scotland 51%; and USA 74%.

Nearly a quarter of the immigrants from outside Ireland (25.6%) were engaged in occupations connoted with industries other than agriculture, a considerably higher percentage than that for any of the other sections of the population.

Migrants and persons born outside Ireland had a proportionately high percentage in transport and communication jobs.

The percentage out of work was small - 73,907 – or only 6% (males 6.9% and females 3.4%); the exactly corresponding figure for Northern Ireland was 11.2%. One of the reasons for the low figure for the Irish Free State, was that the numbers of persons assisting relatives and the numbers of heads of concerns-persons who ran very little risk of unemployment were very large.

Of the females unemployed, over half (55-9%) were under 24 years of age, as compared with only a quarter (25.6%) of the males. More than half the males (61.1%) out of work were 35 years of age or over, as compared with less than a quarter of the females (21.1%).

The percentage unemployed was lowest in rural areas. In such localities the occupied population was largely composed of farmers and their relatives. The percentage unemployed was highest in the city of Cork and lowest in the rural areas of Connacht and Ulster. Contrary to the general trend, there was more unemployment amongst contractors’ labourers, motor drivers and dock labourers under 20 than in the groups aged 20-34.

There was more unemployment amongst agricultural labourers and clerks aged 35-54 than amongst those aged 20-34.

To be continued…

The 1926 Census of Ireland is now fully digitised and searchable online. Great credit is due to the National Archives of Ireland for all their work.

May 2026 historical walking tours with Kieran: All tours free, 2 hours, no booking required.

Sunday evening, 24 May: The Lough and its Curiosities; meet at green area at northern green of The Lough, entrance of Lough Road to The Lough, Lough Church end at 6.30pm.