Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

CULTURE SHOCK: While Official Ireland fiddles with legislation to amalgamate national repositories of priceless information, thousands of documents sit on pallets in unsuitable warehouses, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE

PROBABLY THE single most successful cultural project in the last five years in Ireland has been the project by the National Archives to digitise and make available online the 1911 census. It began in 2007, when the Dublin records went online. Antrim, Kerry and Down followed in 2008 and all the other counties became available last August. The public response has been phenomenal. Up to last January, there had been 165 million hits on the site, with 5.5 million users logged on. About 60 per cent are from the Republic, 30 per cent from the UK (including, of course, Northern Ireland which is covered in the census) and the rest from North America and continental Europe. It is hard to think of any cultural project by a public institution that has had such an impact in such a short time.