Tom Doyle :: TALK

A friend of mine recently brought my attention to the 1911 census of Ireland that the National Archives of Ireland have kindly made available to the public. For weeks I had planned to visit this site, but because of being extremely busy at work, I simply hadn’t got the time to have a proper look.

Anyway, over the Christmas period I had the time to find out about my roots. The site itself - http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ - currently only provides the 1911 census for Dublin, so I could only trace one side of my family, the Doyles.

The census brought up a lot of questions about the past, things like, why did my great great grandad live with his step mother with 4 other kids, but his father lived elsewhere… - and why would his stepmum say she was a widow when her husband was still alive?? Very interesting stories were spoke about over the Christmas dinner, put it that way!! The greatest part was that someone had actually put most of our family tree together and posted it online that answered most of our questions! www.thebakers.ie (Sylvester Doyle)

The 1911 Census of Ireland, is a great place to start to find out about your family. Hopefully it won’t be long before the put the rest of the country’s census online, so I can do the rest!

Well, the Christmas break is over and we’re now already two days into 2008. For me 2007 was a fast, exciting and busy year. I hope this year can be just as good if not better.

All this talk recently of doom and gloom gets to me though. I’m a big believer in visualisation, if you visualise it, it will happen. So if everyone thinks we are going to have bad times ahead, it will catch on, people start thinking negatively, don’t spend money and the downward spiral begins.

Well I’m going to be as positive as possible, in no particular order:

1. Man Utd to retain the Premiership Champions Title
2. Prosperous year for 2bscene, TheStreetGallery and another so far unnamed business I have in the pipeline
3. A return of belief in the property market
4. Bertie Ahern to retire…

That’s the shortlist, some achievable, some not so - but I know one things for sure… I’ll be doing anything in my power to help these along!