The development of the country’s sugar beet industry is recalled in a new exhibition presented by the National Archives, chronicling key aspects of Irish life over the last 100 years.
The exhibition, ‘Society and State – Ireland through its Records,’ at the Coach House, Dublin Castle, was officially opened by the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin, on April 17 and will run there until September 8.
Entry to the exhibition is free. It will then move to the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, Co. Laois, from September 18 to September 20.
‘Society and State – Ireland through its Records,’ showcases a selection of records which chronicle how the State and Irish society interacted from the 1920s to the end of the 20th century.
Minister Martin said: “Since 2012, the Decade of Centenaries marked the centenaries of the revolutionary era that concluded with partition, civil war, and the creation of the independent Irish state.
“It makes sense, then, that after the conclusion of the Decade of Centenaries, we should lift our heads up to gaze beyond 1923, to explore the society that emerged thereafter.
“As we approach the National Archives’ release – in 2026 – of the 1926 census, the first comprehensive and official accounting of the state that had so recently come into being, we look back on the official records held in the National Archives and explore what they reveal about life in Ireland since it came into being over a century ago.”
This first census of the Irish Free State, she said, provided the government of the day with a statistical picture of Ireland, and its people.
“This population information supported the government in planning for its citizens in the decades ahead.
“This exhibition begins with the 1920s and 1930s as a period of post-independence expansion and a newfound freedom after centuries of British rule, and ends with the 1990s, with the increasing liberalisation of Irish society, and the emergence of the so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’.
“The records on view, representing these years and the many events and moments they marked, end just as we approach the noughties, given that most records of the state do not transfer to the National Archives until they are 30-years-old,” the minister said.
Orlaith McBride, director of the National Archives, said that despite the economic challenges faced by the new state, a programme of development began in the 1920s.
McBride explained: “From the provision of social housing to the introduction of water and sewerage schemes, from the electrification of rural Ireland to the expansion of a public transport network, over the decades the physical infrastructure of the country was transformed and modernised.”
A section of the exhibition covers Irish work and Irish workers, with a focus on the sugar beet industry.
The 1932 and 1934 Control of Manufacturers Acts were intended to encourage the growth of native Irish industries.
Sugar was one of the success stories and was an example of an Irish industry emerging from an agricultural base, the exhibition outlines.
A new state body, An Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, the Irish Sugar Company, founded in 1933, oversaw the development of the sugar beet industry. Its factories in Carlow, Tuam, Mallow and Thurles provided employment and facilitated secondary industries in and around those towns.
Meanwhile, policies for the promotion of the Irish language were introduced, symbols of Ireland such as the Irish harp and the ‘punt’ were produced, and public morality was shaped by the increasingly central role played by the Catholic church in the affairs of state, the National Archives outline.
“From 1926, a census was conducted every 10 years mirroring the evolving state. From emigration to economic growth, from free secondary education to the lifting of the marriage bar, the 20th century witnessed transformative improvements in public services in Ireland, as well as momentous social and cultural changes. A nation was built,” said the director of the National Archives.
This will be the National Archives’ third year in a row to attend the National Ploughing Championships.
Last year, it took its exhibition ‘On an equal footing with all: Ireland at the League of Nations’ to the championships and in 2022, it was ‘The Treaty 1921: Records from the Archives.’