Doing a little reading tells me that I was wrong about the 1881 census, there was one taken for Ireland. Below is an account as to why when and how it was destroyed, and reading it will probably give many opinions as to the reasons why, and may equal the number of people who read this! Interesting stuff. http://homepage.tinet.ie/~seanjmurphy/nai/censusmemo.htm The next link has the surviving pages of the 1881 census online, interesting but not much help in finding your ancestors. A wonderful project though, perhaps someday they'll put all the surviving irish census records on the website? http://www.qub.ac.uk/cdda/iredb/1881.htm Colman Ahern, Berkeley.