Mayo woman announced as Census 1926 Centenarian Ambassador

THE National Archives of Ireland has officially announced 48 Centenarian Ambassadors ahead of the historic release on April 18 of the 1926 Census of Population records.

Bridget Joyce, who lives in Mayo, is among the ambassadors chosen from almost 100 people who were alive at the time the census was taken in 1926 and who contacted the National Archives.

The selected ambassadors were born between 1920 and 1926, and today live all over Ireland, from Donegal to Waterford, and from Dublin to Galway. There are also Centenarian Ambassadors representing the Irish diaspora living today in the US, Canada, Britain and Australia.

The programme has captured the first-hand personal testimony of each of the ambassadors, which offers a unique, living perspective on the past century of Irish life. These testimonies will be held by the National Archives as a permanent link to the past.

Ambassador video and photo stories will also be used in association with Census 1926 activities around the country, while each ambassador has also been presented with a specially-designed commemorative mug and certificate.

Joseph Davis from Cork, one of the chosen Census 1926 Centenarian Ambassadors, commented: “It’s an honour to be chosen as one of the ambassadors for this programme. To still be here more than one hundred years after being recorded in the census back in 1926 is a privilege and a gift. It was a trip down a long memory lane sharing my story with the team at the National Archives and I hope people find our stories interesting. I’m looking forward to exploring the rest of my family in the Census and hope others will do the same.”

Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O’Donovan, commented: “The release of the 1926 Census records is a historic moment, offering an invaluable account of life in the early years of the Free State, and tells the personal stories of families and communities. It’s particularly moving that we can honour the individuals who were recorded in the census in 1926 and are still with us today.”

To celebrate the public release of the 1926 Census, the National Archives and Department of Culture, Communications and Sport announced a wide-ranging public engagement programme, which includes a book, The Story Of Us - Independent Ireland and the 1926 Census (Irish Academic Press), theatre production, The Good Luck Club (ANU Productions), and landmark RTÉ documentary, which will air next month.

The programme also includes major exhibitions running at Dublin Castle, as well as in London and Boston. The exhibition explores the world reflected in the census to reveal what life was like in the newly independent Ireland of 1926: in towns, cities, the countryside and the islands, from urban tenements to the mansions of the aristocracy. The Story of Us uses contemporary documents and images, audio-visual displays and the census returns themselves to present a picture of life in 1926: from sport and entertainment to language, culture, religion, gender and the working lives of the inhabitants of the Irish Free State a century ago.

The exhibition will also tour Ireland later in 2026, in partnership with local authorities around the country.

These announcements come ahead of the landmark release of the 1926 Census on April 18 on nationalarchives.ie. The National Archives will make the entire census, comprising over 700,000 individual household returns, freely available and fully searchable online, marking a momentous occasion in Irish history.