Welcome to the Irish State Administration Database.

The Irish State Administration Database constitutes a major research infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences in Ireland, and is of benefit to political scientists, historians, lawyers, sociologists and specialists in public policy. It should also be of interest to public servants and public representatives. The data presented here have been collected principally from official and primary sources. Where this has not proved possible, secondary sources have been relied upon and the accuracy of the data has been verified. Further information on the background to the database and the sources used can be found here

This resource provides a dataset capturing the establishment, growth and evolution of Ireland's state administration from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the present. The database records information about all national-level public organisations, including central Government departments and the agencies under their aegis, commercial state-owned enterprises and other relevant public bodies and institutions. The information in the database has been captured through two sets of related data:

  1. The population of organisations or ‘units’ and their attributes
  2. The set of ‘events’ that happened to each of these organisations at different stages of their development.
For each unit, the database tracks its creation and any subsequent changes to its organisational status (e.g. mergers with other organisations, privatisations, etc.), as well as the evolution of its defining characteristics which include its functions, legal status, the policy fields within which it operates, and its relationship to other organisations in the database. For additional details on the classification schemes used in the database, please see the Codebook. (link) The links to the left are designed to help users navigate their way through the database and understand its contents. New visitors are invited to register (link) to access the database. The project team would appreciate the identification of any errors or the provision of additional information from users of the database. Queries or comments can be e-mailed to info@isad.ie. The database is dynamic and will be updated on a regular basis.

Users of the Irish State Administration Database are kindly requested to use the following citation:

Hardiman, Niamh, Muiris MacCarthaigh, and Colin Scott. Year. The Irish State Administration Database. http://www.isad.ie. Date of access.