The series made available here were originally put online in the mid-2000s by the Historical National Accounts Group for Ireland (HNAG).
HNAG was founded by Kieran Kennedy in 1994 and has been a nexus for scholars and professionals interested in Irish economic history. Meeting initially at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin, the group later migrated to Trinity College Dublin, where it evolved into the Irish Quantitative History group (IQH) that stills meets annually in January.
Comprising academics, researchers and public sector representatives, HNAG’s original mission was to develop comprehensive statistics on Irish economic growth from the Famine to the First World War; those interested in that initial mission are encouraged to read Andersson and Lennard (2019, "Irish GDP between the Famine and the First World War: Estimates based on a dynamic factor model"). Since the inception of HNAG, the group produced outputs including symposiums, working papers, and data series on Irish economic history. With Kieran Kennedy at the helm, the group’s efforts significantly contributed to the exploration and understanding of Ireland’s economic past. One of their outputs was a digital data depository, created by Jason Begley, Frank Geary, and Kevin O’Rourke.
Regrettably, the data made available online by HNAG, and which were stored on TCD servers, were lost in the mid-2010s. With the support of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), through a 2023 Nowlan Digitisation Grant, for which we are very grateful, it has been possible to restore the HNAG data series. In addition to the financial support of the RIA, we also benefited hugely from the cooperation of those involved in HNAG and the IQH.