Architect Dermot Bannon travels to Cappoquin in County Waterford, where his father's family once lived, to examine the lives of families there a century ago.
Using the census records, he examines the structure of the town itself: multigenerational households, industries that have since vanished, and the influence of institutions like the local industrial school.
Dermot discovers that the Keane Family of Cappoquin House were the town’s major landowners but had been displaced at the time the census was recorded.
His research reveals how families lived, worked and organised themselves in a small Irish town and how those patterns from 1926 differ from the realities of life in the same town today. He also asks how an institution like the industrial school could sit side by side with numerous ordinary families.
But Cappoquin wasn’t the only town with an industrial school or institution among its community. The 1926 census is one of the first public records where government and religious institutions were asked to record the names of their residents and not just refer to them by initials or numbers.
Episode One of Come to Your Census broadcasts on RTÉ One at 6.30pm on Sunday May 3rd 2026 and Episode Two broadcasts on Sunday May 10th 2026. at 6.30pm. Both episodes will also be available on RTÉ Player.
