Terraformer is a learning designer from Offaly, residing in Dublin.
Headlines in recent months concerning the digitisation of the 1926 Irish census records painted a stark portrait of Protestant decline during the revolutionary period. The Protestant population of the 26 counties declined from about 311,000 in 1911 to 207,000 in 1926 – 104,000 people, about a third.
The marked drop is routinely cited by unionists and revisionists as evidence that Protestant were forced during this time. Peter Hart in the 1990s claimed 53,000 Protestants left the south in the period 1920-1923, a movement he labelled an involuntary exodus and which has given rise to allegations of ethnic cleansing.
Later evidence has called Hart’s claim into question, with Barry Keane and David Fitzpatrick establishing a longer pattern of emigration with only a slight increase during the years in question and pointing out flaws in Hart’s subset and methodology.
Notwithstanding Hart’s oft-repeated error, relying on the numbers alone is insufficient. It’s a form of circular reasoning: the decline prompts the allegation, but the proof offered is also the decline. The old adage of correlation not being causation comes into play.
When other elements are factored in, the headline-grabbing figure of 104,000 plummets drastically. Emigration was a major part of Irish life at the time. Between 1911 and 1923 180,000 people emigrated from Ireland. Of these, over half (93,000) left before Easter 1916. After being interrupted by WW1, emigration resumed at a similar rate to before the war. Emigration did not spike significantly during the revolutionary years, and the period 1911-1926 fits in with an established pattern of Protestant economic emigration.
In the 18th century, 125,000 Ulster Protestants left Ireland for America. Hundreds of thousands of Protestants also left in the 1820s and 1830s. Between the famine and 1911 about 450,000 Protestants left Ireland.
Martin Maguire paints a picture of a Dublin Protestant working class in this period that was highly mobile: “The 1911 census reveals that In Inchicore, one of the few areas where the Protestant population was growing, only 23 per cent of the Protestant households that had featured in the 1901 census were still in the area. Many of those working in Inchicore were employed in the railway engineering works. It is unlikely that in depressed Dublin very many of these skilled workers moved elsewhere in Dublin. It is likely that many moved to pursue more attractive employment opportunities on the “mainland”.”
Maguire points out that “unlike the Catholic working class, which was almost wholly comprised of migrants from the countryside, the Protestant working class as a class had little organic connection with rural Ireland. Indeed the evidence suggests that the Protestant working class was substantially comprised of migrants from Britain and their descendants.”
Barry Keane notes the proportion of Protestants in Ireland that were foreign-born increased decade on decade from 1861 to 1911. For the 26-county area, 62,000 Protestants were foreign-born (predominantly Britain) compared with 406,000 Irish-born in 1861 (13%). By 1911, there were 100,000 foreign-born Protestants compared with 227,000 Irish-born 1911 (30%).
Between 1911 and 1926 the Protestant population of Westmeath fell by 49%. Of the Protestants who left the county in the period, more than half had been born outside of Ireland.
Andy Bielenberg estimates routine Protestant emigration – emigration that would have been predicted regardless of any political upheaval – for the period at 45,000. Robin Bury and Don Wood give a lower estimate of about 25,000.
Another significant reason for Protestant decline was the departure of the military garrison. The 1911 census includes 21,400 British soldiers who were stationed in Ireland. With the British army’s rotation system, the majority would have been British regiments and predominantly Protestant. Only between a quarter and third were Irish.
By the time of the British withdrawal in 1922, troop numbers had swelled to 51,000, along with several thousand nursing and administrative staff.
It was a well attested Protestant tradition to marry into the military. Between 1871 and 1911, in surveyed Dublin Protestant working class parishes over a third of marriages involved a groom who was in the military.
Likewise, in County Cork in 1919 the marriages of 38% of Protestant women were to members of the British army or navy. Other samples around the country confirm disproportionate marriage to military personnel by Protestant women, supporting the thesis that the British withdrawal significantly affected Protestant numbers and fertility in Ireland.
Bielenberg attributes 30,000 to the garrison withdrawal, including dependants, while Bury and Woods also give figures close to that. British soldiers outcompeting local Protestant males for brides would also have the knock-on effect of spurring male Protestants to marry Catholics or to emigrate.
Add in between 3,000 and 5,000 Protestants who died during WW1 and the established pattern of natural decrease, Bielenberg arrives at a figure of just 16,000 departures in excess of what we might otherwise expect and which might be explained by political violence. Bury and Wood give notably higher figures of 42,000 and 47,000 “excess” departures.
Wherever you feel the dial is most likely to fall on the spectrum, it has to be remembered that excess departures do not in and of themselves prove the case for “forced” departure.
A complicating factor is the question of how much of a pull factor Northern Ireland represented. In 1926, NI had 64,000 Protestants born in the 26 counties (7.7% of NI Protestant population). The number of Protestants in NI in 1926 was close to the 1911 figure. It’s likely Protestant migration to NI from the south offset routine Protestant emigration from NI during the period.
Moving within your own country, or more specifically to stay within your own country, in many cases just a few miles up the road, is arguably less about being pushed out than about being attracted in. We already know the southern Protestant population was highly mobile, and historically Irish Protestants moved in large numbers spurred by economic opportunism.
Considering one of the pillars of unionist objection to Home Rule was that it would be economically ruinous, it seems logical that independence would spur excess out-migration among this cohort. For decades the spectre of an Ireland severed from Britain falling to destitution was drilled into Irish Protestants till it became an article of faith. These Cassandra visions by themselves can plausibly explain the majority of excess departures without recourse to alleged sectarian provocation.
The purpose of this piece is not to downplay incidences of sectarian aggression and intimidation that undoubtedly occurred during this period. Outrages such as Dunmanway, Coolacrease and Altnaveigh display a hard-to-deny sectarian character.
Nevertheless, these instances stand out in particular for their rarity. Such abuses were not widespread or systemic, nor were they a policy of the Provisional Government or later the Free State or Anti-Treaty authorities. Republican forces protected Protestant citizens and businesses as a general rule.
The Free State also spent considerable sums to compensate Protestants and others whose property had been damaged during the troubles. The Undersecretary of State for the Colonies Lord Arnold noted to the House of Lords in 1924: “Looking at these questions of compensation as a whole, probably no Government or no Governments in the course of history have made more continued and more generous provision for those who have suffered in internal strife than the British Government and the Free State Government have made during the past two years in dealing with cases of damage and injury in Ireland. I believe that statement can be tested historically and found to be perfectly true.”
To conclude, I echo John M Regan’s summation of his review of David FitzPatrick’s research into this topic. Reports of a sudden ‘mass exodus’ of Protestants now appear baseless, and hard evidence of ethnic cleansing has not been produced.
Sources:
Protestant decline during Ireland’s revolutionary period 1911-1926: Some observations on Robin Bury’s Buried Lives. Barry Keane. 2018.
Review of Descendancy: Irish Protestant Histories Since 1795 by David FitzPatrick. John M Regan. History Ireland. Issue 4, Vol 23. 2015.
Ongoing research: Irish emigrants in 1912-1923 revolutionary period. Mark Holan. 2014.
Where did the Protestants go? Dublin Review of Books. 2015.
UK, Ireland Army Census, 1911. UK Forces War Records.
Ethnic cleansing? Protestant decline in West Cork between 1911 and 1926. Barry Keane. History Ireland. 2012.
Claims Of Irish Loyalists. Hansard. House of Lords. Volume 56: debated on Wednesday 5 March 1924.
Historic 1926 census shows Protestant population drop in Irish Free State. Gabija Gataveckaite. BBC. 18 April 2026.
The British military withdrawal from ‘Southern’ Ireland, 1922. John Gibney. Irish Examiner. 31 January 2022.
Bandon Valley Massacre: The violent week that left 13 Protestants dead. Pat O’Connell. Irish Examiner. 25 April 1922.
A House Built on Sand. Philip O’Connor and Pat Muldowney. Dublin Review of Books. Issue 11, 2009.
Files detail cover-up of 1922 IRA murder of six Protestants. BBC. 12 May 2018.
Anti-Home Rule Postcards (1912-1914) #2. Irish Memory. 16 February 2013.
‘Spies and informers beware!’: IRA executions of alleged civilian spies during the War of Independence 1919 -1921. Padraig Og O’Ruairc. The Irish Story. 4 June 2017.
Northern Ireland: A Century of Change in Statistics. Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. April 2026.
Shankill Road Defenders praise Fleadh organisers after ‘extraordinary welcome’ at City Hall performance
The west Belfast band received a rapturous welcome on arrival at the Gig Rig during Sunday’s final day of performances
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Members of the Shankill Road Defenders ahead of their performance at the Gig Rig at Belfast City Hall during the Fleadh
A Belfast marching band from the Shankill Road has praised the organisers of the Fleadh after they say they received an “extraordinary welcome” for their performance at Belfast City Hall on Sunday night.
Gordon Ramsey from the Shankill Road Defenders flute band told The Irish News that they and other bands from loyalist and unionist backgrounds were given a seat at the table at the largest celebration of Irish traditional music in the world, not just as a token gesture.
The Defenders were among a large group of marching bands who participated across the week of musical performance in the city, which has been hailed a roaring success ahead of Belfast hosting the event again in 2027.
The west Belfast band received a rapturous welcome on arrival at the Gig Rig during Sunday’s final day of performances, before playing a number of tunes, including ‘The Apprentice Boys’ and ‘Star of the County Down’.
“They applauded us from the moment we came out the doors at the City Hall, so I think they were initially applauding us because we were from the Shankill and we showed up,” Mr Ramsey said.
“By the end of the performance, they were definitely applauding because they were enjoying the music, you can feel when you are connecting with an audience.
“I have to say we were pleasantly surprised by just how relaxed everything was.
“We were concerned that when we were walking around the town in uniform might be a problem, but when we did it was no problem at all.
“When we performed at the City Hall we got an extraordinary welcome from the moment we stepped out of the doors.
“We were very happy with the atmosphere, we all enjoyed it much more than we thought we were going to.”
Mr Ramsey, an academic at Queen’s University who gave a lecture at the Grand Opera House on Saturday about marching bands, has been playing with the Shankill Road Defenders for over a decade.
He says there had been “scepticism and opposition” from some within their community to the decision to perform at the Fleadh, but the majority responded positively.
“The band wasn’t hard to convince because this band has really committed itself for over a decade to engaging with other communities, playing our music to anyone who wants to hear it.
“That has been a longstanding policy really driven by our chair David Thompson, with the full support of the band.
“We feel that that policy has done us good. Others within our community were not convinced, we did get scepticism and opposition from some people who felt we shouldn’t be doing that.
“But we got a lot more support than criticism, so we never really questioned our decision and we think that that decision has been fully vindicated.”
The Shankill Road Defenders are founding members of the Belfast Bands Forum, set up last year to coordinate and promote local marching band culture. The forum was represented on the organising committee of the Fleadh.
Mr Ramsey was full of praise for the organisers, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, who he says brought loyalist bands to the table and ensured their voices were heard.
“They facilitated those connections that allowed trust to be built, and allowed us and quite a number of other bands to come on board, with some confidence that it was going to be what we wanted it to be.
“We felt that we were engaged and being listened to. When we had complaints, something was done about it and we felt that we were at the table, not at somebody else’s mercy.”
An evening dedicated to marching bands also took place at Titanic Slipways last Thursday, where ‘The Sash’ was among the songs played by bands.
Belfast Bands Forum at Titanic Slipways as part of Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann Belfast 2026. PICTURE: COLM LENAGHANBelfast Bands Forum at Titanic Slipways as part of Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann Belfast 2026. PICTURE: COLM LENAGHAN
Darren Leighton, chair of the Belfast Bands Forum, described the reception their bands and musicians received over the week of the Fleadh as “incredible” and says he hopes it is not a one-off.
“One of the most important things for us has been challenging some of the stereotypes around the marching band community,” Mr Leighton said.
“We didn’t need to argue against those stereotypes — we simply put our musicians and our culture on the stage and allowed people to experience it for themselves.
“For me, this week has shown that engagement doesn’t mean giving up who you are. You can be confident and proud of your own identity while sharing your culture with others.
“Our musicians stepped outside their comfort zones this week, performed in front of new audiences and were welcomed everywhere they went.”
Belfast can take immense pride and lessons from Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann.
Ryan McAleer looks at what Belfast got right for the Fleadh, with some suggestions for improvement in 2027.
Irish dancers in front of Belfast City Hall as record numbers attend the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2026.
By Ryan McAleer
August 11, 2026 at 12:58pm BST
On the closing Sunday of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Wexford last August, I can still remember the slight feeling of apprehension among our northern delegation down there about the following summer.
Would the same numbers that turned out for Wexford come north for Belfast in August 2026?
Derry showed it could be done in 2013, but Belfast felt like a completely different prospect altogether.
Images of burning buses beamed across the world just two months before didn’t ease those fears.
Even in the days before the opening ceremony, there were conversations asking if Belfast had set itself up by throwing the number 800,000 around so casually for so many weeks and months.
Monday August 3rd brought a collective sigh of relief as the fear, tension and apprehension disappeared in a flood of positive stories and sheer joy.
Belfast had gone all in for the Fleadh on day one – not just for the traditional business-end of the festival, i.e. the final three days.
Businesses, the council, government departments, Translink, the PSNI… All seemed to pull together to make it work, and all with a smile on their faces.
By close of play on Tuesday August 4th, half a million people had made it into the newly pedestrianised city centre, traditionally the numbers that could be expected throughout the full eight days of the world’s biggest Irish cultural festival.
Even walking around early in the week, you could feel the positive energy humming on every street corner.
By the final Sunday, some 1.65 million had been captured on Belfast One BID’s cameras in the one square mile around the City Hall over the eight days, more than double the 800,000 forecast.
Stormont’s Department for the Economy had predicted an economic windfall of around £53 million based on 700,000 attending the Fleadh, with Visit Belfast suggesting a £60m benefit from around 800,000.
Back of the cigarette packet maths would suggest we’ve easily crossed into £100m territory.
But the Fleadh felt much more than an opportunity to turn a quick pound.
Despite investing significant sums in pop-up ventures for a week-long festival, most local hospitality operators didn’t take the hand with prices.
From Translink staff at Grand Central Station to the police on the beat, everybody seemed to have a smile on their face.
I heard tales of people from Limerick and Tipperary who had never crossed the border before sing the praises of the “friendly” people.
Northern friends who’ve played traditional music their whole lives and have travelled the length and breadth of the island for Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann felt immense pride in what Belfast and Ards CCÉ had pulled off.
Key to the success was the combination of pedestrianisation; the decision to create a week-long itinerary of events; and businesses embracing the Fleadh for all eight days.
The hands-off approach – allowing people to walk the streets carrying plastic pint glasses – worked wonders.
The streets looked clean, the toilet provision was sufficient and there were plenty of food vendors to feed the masses.
So what can we learn for next year?
In Wexford’s first year of the Fleadh, some 650,000 people flowed through its streets. The positive stories from 2024 turned that into 800,000 the following year.
Given the incredible reach of positive stories and coverage of Belfast over the past week, it is not unrealistic for the city to prepare for two million Fleadh visitors in 2027.
That will bring added challenges for the organisers and Translink in particular.
While the park and ride facilities introduced for the Fleadh worked very well, the north’s public transport company was simply unable to cope with the numbers this year.
Whether rail, Goldliner or Metro, the capacity was not sufficient to meet the demand.
Resolving this with public resources under strain will require new thinking. Can Translink reallocate resources from elsewhere for one week, or could the private sector offer any solutions?
While Belfast City Council got so much right this year, they got the camping and caravan provision wrong.
Two sites for tents and offering a waste ground in the Titanic Quarter to families for their caravans was short-sighted.
Grass caravan sites will be needed in 2027. Most campers in Wexford last year spent the week on sports fields without any issue.
Given the number of public spaces and sports fields across Belfast, this should be an easy fix.
There are lessons for hospitality businesses as well. Scenes of hundreds of people dancing outdoors to music pumping through the streets looked incredible on social media.
But those businesses don’t need to pump that music out during the afternoon to drown out the magical young musicians looking to play outside their venue for free.
Less amplification and more sessions next year please.
More pedestrianisation will also needed, particularly in places like Dunbar Link.
For now, we can all bask in the success of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2026. Belfast feels like a city ripe for transformation.
Even if Belfast manages to secure a third year for the Fleadh, it has demonstrated the appetite for a city centre-wide cultural celebration of music and inclusivity.
Surely other towns and cities around the north will have taken note. I’m looking in your direction Newry!
Standing on Royal Avenue on Friday at around 5pm amongst an estimated 100,000 people, it was difficult to imagine a time when traditional Irish music was considered a bit of an embarrassment.
But pre-1960s and the onset of dynamic new bands like Planxty, The Dubliners and The Clancys, traditional music was viewed by many as something best left behind. A waste of time.
Broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna travelled Ireland in the 1950s seeking out traditional fiddle and flute players to record before their songs were lost forever. He told RTÉ some would arrive hiding their fiddles in case they would be seen to be traditional musicians.
Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains said it was “a complex” people had about the music that had turned them away.
If only those few hundred people who kept the music alive could’ve been in Belfast this week to see kids on every street corner playing reels, jigs and hornpipes.
I consumed the Fleadh for the first four days via social media in a small town near Bilbao where I was on holiday. As a journalist I follow all the main political parties and their members and it’s fair to say some were enjoying the festivities more than others.
The business owners I know in the city seemed more sure and the footage of heaving streets suggested the public were on board.
I was looking forward to returning to experience it myself because I have history with the Fleadh. I lived near Cavan town when it was awarded the event in 2010 for three years.
I’ll never forget visiting on day one. It was like someone had waved a magic wand over the town. Thronged streets, music everywhere, and an incredible buzz. I was hooked.
The next year I invited my Australian brother-in-law to visit. To this day he says Cavan is the best small town in Ireland he’s ever been in. I think even the most devoted son or daughter of Breffni would struggle with that description, but when your only experience of a town is when it’s Fleadh week, it makes sense.
Derelict buildings are repurposed, extra effort is put into cleaning, musicians from all walks of life break out the instruments and the welcome mat is rolled out to the world.
I missed its visit to Derry but was back in Drogheda when it hosted the Fleadh in 2018. Fears a bigger town, better able to cope with the crowds, would impact the atmosphere were unwarranted. It was like Cavan, only bigger.
But what of Belfast? Would the largest location for the Fleadh yet be able to step up? When I finally arrived in the city centre on Friday I have to say I couldn’t have been prouder of my home town. It has grabbed the opportunity the Fleadh presents with both hands.
The thousands of people milling around catching performances, both organised and impromptu, combined with a wonderful atmosphere without edge or menace — it was the Fleadh brought to the next level.
And I was to find out I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.
I ran into a politician who shall remain nameless. He’s not from a nationalist party but he said it is, in his opinion, the best thing that’s ever happened to this city. He was almost emotional.
This is what a publican I spoke to felt as well. He said as he approached the beginning of the Fleadh he was wishing it was all over because of the extra paperwork he and his fellow publicans had been subjected to.
Five days in he said there is nowhere he would rather be, such was the impact it had had both on business, and on the city. He said beyond the expected teething problems, everything had gone smoothly.
A lot of this, he said, was down to local government. He had huge praise for the Department for Communities, whose officials he said were very easy to deal with, along with their city council colleagues and the PSNI.
His experience had been that a common sense approach was applied to the week and the event was much the better for it.
I ran into old friends and colleagues and they were all buzzing. A schoolfriend who now lives in Tokyo scheduled a trip home around the Fleadh and he was in shock at the transformation of the city.
One former colleague who has no truck with things considered ‘nationalist’ even came in to see what all the fuss was about. She told me she “ticked the box”, but would probably be back next year.
I caught too many performances to mention them all, but among the best I saw was Britain’s Got Talent semi-finalist Niamh Noade, who packed out the council’s wonderful 2 Royal Avenue venue where she played a set of traditional and contemporary songs.
And the best thing of all? Every Fleadh gets better the next year when it stays in the same location because lessons are inevitably learned. So roll on 2027.
It was a week to remember on the streets of Belfast. I had one I’d like to remember for a different reason.
Not so much as a peep of a tin whistle graced my ears. And had I been anywhere close, it would have been drowned out by the sound of coughing, spluttering and sneezing — while the aches would have negated any chance of even tapping a foot to a tune.
The sights, sounds and sheer joy of the Fleadh passed me by save for a social media watching brief.
I left the house but once. Dosed on tablets and cough medicine, I hauled myself to the funeral of a school friend’s mum.
I, with several other friends, had spent many a weekend in the home of the wonderful lady. It felt right to be there. There was a little guilt for coughing over others in the church hall, but not as much as I would have felt had I not hauled myself along at all.
Four of us friends from all those years ago were there. One, whose mother had passed away, now lives in New Zealand, another in Enniskillen. The internet has kept us abreast of what we’ve all been doing.
A third, though, had been absent for 17 years, the result of a personal incident. I hope he knows how good it was to see him again. I hope the all too brief reconnection will be repeated soon. He left before the four of us could properly get together.
It was the first time the four of us had been in the same building for more than three decades. But after quick handshakes and raised eyebrows, it was very quickly back into the same old banter we’d enjoyed in younger days for the three of us who remained.
It’s just a pity it wasn’t in a pub, soaking up the atmosphere in the centre of Belfast. God knows a hot whisky, or two, could have fairly softened the harshness of my throat.
I left, bemused at where all those years went to and with the stark reminder that life is short, too short for bitterness and dwelling on the mistakes of the past. Friendships are special and should be cherished.
I kept up with scenes of the Fleadh online, I would have loved to experience the joy flowing through the streets of Belfast. But, as ever in Northern Ireland, that bitterness was still lurking in those social media sewers. You just knew it was waiting to pounce with one wrong step.
It is, quite plainly, not in some people’s interest to have over a million and a half people join together for the craic, the music and the fun.
There are some out there who just can’t stand it when the people of this country come together and actually enjoy themselves. If the atmosphere in Northern Ireland was akin to what we’ve seen over the last week, they would be even more marginalised. They would have no place, drowned out by the beating of drums and twiddling of fiddles.
They are the usual voices from the shadows of the back streets, even some in the political world and commentators who, though they are grown-ups and should know better, were itching from the start to find fault.
How very dare Northern Ireland have something that everyone loves and has been hugely successful?
It is, quite plainly, not in some people’s interest to have over a million and a half people join together for the craic, the music and the fun. Much better, of course, to have them out taking offence, throwing bricks, attacking police and communities.
Rather than embrace the spirit of the week, what kept appearing on social media were comments like: ‘This is what an all-Ireland would be like’, which provoked the expected responses.
Could we not be allowed to enjoy the week-long event for what it was, without someone trying desperately to give it a political context? It seems not.
I had some sympathy for the food vendor who quickly apologised for a controversial song being played. Mistakes do happen. I went on Spotify and checked out ‘popular Irish songs’ and what do you know, the first playlist, song number five and there was said tune.
I saw others complain that a performance by loyalist marching bands was ‘confined’ to Titanic slipway rather than given a space in the centre of the city. Were those bands not delighted to be there?
Fault can always be found if you go looking for it. Eyes can always be poked if you point the finger in a certain direction.
But just look at what the Fleadh did for Belfast. While it might be a bit too much to hope that the city centre could be like that all the time, there’s surely some way of tapping into that spirit over the summer weekends to come.
Maybe then I’d get a chance to join in.
Sad though any funeral is, the one I felt I needed to be present at did at least give me a chance to reconnect.
Maybe one day those who seek nothing other than to be offended at every turn of the day in Northern Ireland will have to attend a funeral of their own. Maybe then they will have pause for thought on how they have lived their lives seeking out the bad when there’s so much good to be found, then find the time to find it.
Time goes fast. Last week proved that Belfast can be so much more than a legacy of bitterness. It would be nice to enjoy a delightful sip of Guinness without the generous helping of spite from the sidelines.
But there’s always the fear that words said at gatherings, promises made, then fall by the wayside and we slip back to the way we lived before. We need to change that tired old tune.
