“What do I have to say to the people who will live in 100 years ? And who am I talking to, exactly?” These two strange questions plagued Roisin Ingle for much of March. A member of one of Ireland’s two million households, the journalist from The Irish Times was called upon to complete her census form before April 3. Twenty-three pages of information, in all, from the number of people in the household to the type of internet connection, including teleworking habits.
And, this year, a new box has therefore appeared. “It’s a bit of a time capsule, explains the site Thejournal.ie, which allows the Irish to send a message to future generations.” Once collected, the documents will be kept for one hundred years. Then downgraded in 2122, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the independence of the Republic of Ireland. “Some people included their family tree, others, members of minorities such as Travelers, expressed the difficulties encountered in Irish society”, listing RTÉ, Irish Public Broadcasting. It is a snapshot of the country, with its positives and its flaws, such as the saturated housing market and the state of the healthcare system. This approach, unique in the world – according to the Irish press – “thus also allows you to share your existential worries”, primarily related to Covid-19, climate change and the war in Ukraine, supports theIrish Examiner.
Approximately 2,000 “Jedis”
Even before the creation of this rectangle to go back in time, the censuses “have regularly been used by the Irish to express their opinions”, resumes RTÉ. In 2016, for example, 2,000 people declared their faith Jedi to denounce the influence of the Catholic Church on society. A century earlier, in 1911, many women, still disenfranchised, refused to fill out the forms. The same year, “nationalist activist Patrick Pearse wrote it all in Irish” in protest against British rule of the island.
This 2022 census, postponed for a year because of the pandemic, could also prove doubly historic, by formalizing the passage of the bar of five million inhabitants, a first since the great famine of 1845.
“Finally, I still wrote something, says Roisin Ingle. A single sentence, advising the future reader to look for my name in the archives of The Irish Times to uncover both my deepest and most useless thoughts. I was paralyzed by the pressure to find THE right thing to say that would sum up everything I feel. Me, whose job is to write. It was too much.”