175,000 new historical records released by Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

175,000 new historical records are now freely available online in the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland to mark the 103rd anniversary of the Four Courts blaze that destroyed the Public Record Office of Ireland, and with it seven centuries of Irish history. 

Launched three years ago, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is now home to over 350,000 records and 250 million words of searchable Irish history. Led by Trinity College Dublin and supported by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, the project brings together historians, computer scientists, archivists, and librarians working to digitally recreate Ireland’s destroyed public record office and its lost collections.

A total of 75 memory institutions across the island of Ireland and around the world are contributing digital images of replacement documents, transcripts and duplicates to the Virtual Treasury. This includes core partners National Archives of Ireland (NAI), Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), The National Archives UK (TNA), the Irish Manuscripts Commission (IMC) and the Library of Trinity College Dublin.

Pictured in the National Archives of Ireland inspecting transcriptions of the destroyed 19th-century census are Zoë Reid, Keeper of Manuscripts, National Archives, Ireland and Brian Gurrin, Population and Census Specialist, Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland.

19th-century census

Among new treasures freely available online today for the first time are 60,000 names from the 19th-century census destroyed in 1922. Painstakingly compiled from transcriptions preserved in the National Archives of Ireland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, these recovered transcripts of census returns reveal ordinary lives across the island of Ireland in the decades before and after the Great Famine.

New in the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland for 2025:

• Population Portal: genealogical riches include 60,000 names from the 19th-century census destroyed in 1922. (NAI, PRONI, Trinity)
• The Age of Revolution Portal: documents illustrate the drama of the 1798 Rebellion and Ireland’s links to the American Revolution. (PRONI, NAI, Library of Congress, TNA)
• The Age of Conquest Portal: five million words of Anglo-Norman (1170-1500) Irish history translated into English. (TNA, IMC, NAI, Trinity)
• State Papers Ireland: (1660–1720) over 10 million words on governing Ireland in the dramatic years following Cromwell’s death. (TNA)
• Knowledge Graph Explorer: a powerful new tool for identifying people and places, and the links between them, in the records. (ADAPT Research Ireland Centre)

Trinity historian Dr Peter Crooks, Academic Director of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, said “We are excited to release our latest collections freely online for citizen researchers, students, and the academic community.

The scale, scope, and significance of these materials is remarkable. They will be of huge interest to anyone exploring Ireland’s story as a global island. Thousands of names of individuals from before and after the Great Famine; extensive intelligence reports from the Tudor era; and a host of medieval records presented in English alongside the original Latin parchment — these vast and varied collections are a testament to the power of collaboration.

“A stand-out for me is the extraordinary detective work by our research team and partners in Dublin and Belfast on the pre-Famine census returns. Millions of names were lost, tragically, in 1922 when those records went up in flames. But today, on the 103rd anniversary of the fire, we are releasing more than 60,000 names newly recovered from those very census returns. It’s a tremendous achievement. What we have uncovered after years of painstaking archival work will help families across the world trace their story deeper into the Irish past.”

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is supported by the Irish Government through funding from the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport under Project Ireland 2040 and is freely and permanently available online at Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (virtualtreasury.ie).

Patrick O’Donovan, Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, said: “The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is a wonderful legacy for our Decade of Centenaries. It offers an invaluable historical resource for people of all ages and traditions across the island of Ireland and abroad, and democratises access so that our shared history is more accessible and engaging for everyone.

He added that "the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland has enabled local communities and family historians to explore their own histories in new ways, through the freely accessible archival records and innovative technologies. This creative approach, underpinned by academic rigour, allows for new perspectives and a greater understanding of what we thought we knew already.  It is very inspiring to see how the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland has encouraged and stimulated new research and scholarship.  I encourage everyone to delve into the Treasury and its archival collections, and discover for themselves the riches contained within these records.”

Dr Linda Doyle, Provost of Trinity College Dublin, added: “The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is a beacon project demonstrating the power of interdisciplinary research, advanced technologies and strong partnerships to achieve significant societal impact.

"The release of so many fascinating new records for free to the public is another impressive milestone and will be of interest to diverse audiences interested in preserving and exploring our shared past. The project is underpinned by rigorous academic scholarship, the ethical application of artificial intelligence, as well as many fruitful collaborations.”

A notebook preserved in the National Archives of Ireland containing names of two households, transcribed from the 1841 census for Headford, County Galway.

Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) is an all-island and international research partnership working to reconstruct the Public Record Office of Ireland — a magnificent archive destroyed in 1922 at the outset of the Civil War. It was launched by Taoiseach Micheál Martin in 2022, as a living legacy from the Decade of Centenaries, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the destruction of Ireland’s public records dating back to the 13th century.

VRTI is engaged in research at the forefront of technology, including the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence. This research is led by the Research Ireland-funded ADAPT Centre and computer scientists in the School of Computer Science and Statistics. VRTI is committed to bringing Irish history to the people. It has delivered eight local roadshows from Donegal and Derry to Cork and Waterford since 2023, with Youghal and Limerick to follow next on the list. A new digital exhibition, "Collecting Ireland’s History", exploring the crucial role of Libraries in Ireland and Britain in the recovery of Irish records, was launched in June 2025.  

Knowledge Graph Explorer

The VRTI platform has been upgraded with powerful new features, including the Knowledge Graph Explorer developed as part of a research collaboration with ADAPT Research Ireland Centre. This exciting new tool based on semantic web technology research, harnesses the power of linked data to reveal connections across the archive in a format accessible to the general public, and is the first of its kind for Irish historical research.

The VRTI in numbers

• A quarter of a billion searchable words of Irish history
• 350,000 replacement records
• 60,000 additional names for family historians to explore
• 75 partner archives, libraries and organisations worldwide
• 3 state archives sharing their records and expertise
• 10 Gold Seams containing particularly important sets of documents
• 16 Curated Collections highlighting significant historical topics
• 11K person details in the Knowledge Graph
• 67K place details in the Knowledge Graph
• 2.9 million triples of information in the Knowledge Graph