Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI; ) was the national mapping agency of the Republic of Ireland. It was established on 4 March 2002 as a body corporate. It was the successor to the former Ordnance Survey of Ireland. It and the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI) were themselves the successors to the Irish operations of the British Ordnance Survey. OSI was part of the Irish public service. OSI was headquartered at Mountjoy House in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, which had previously been the headquarters of the British Ordnance Survey in Ireland until 1922.

In March 2023, the Ordnance Survey was dissolved and its functions transferred to a new body called Tailte Éireann, which also incorporates the Property Registration Authority and the Valuation Office.

Organisation

Under the Ordnance Survey Ireland Act 2001, the Ordnance Survey of Ireland was dissolved and a new corporate body called Ordnance Survey Ireland was established in its place. OSI was an autonomous corporate body, with a remit to cover its costs of operation from its sales of data and derived products, which sometimes raised concerns about the mixing of public responsibilities with commercial imperatives. It employed 235 staff in the Phoenix Park and in six regional offices in Cork, Ennis, Kilkenny, Longford, Sligo and Tuam. OSI had sales of €13.3 million in 2012.

Products

The most prominent consumer publications of OSI were the Dublin City and District Street Guide, an atlas of Dublin city, and the Complete Road Atlas of Ireland which it published in co-operation with Land and Property Services Northern Ireland (formerly the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland). The board also published (jointly with OSNI) a series of 1:50000 maps of the entire island known as the Discovery Series and a series of 1:25000 maps of places of interest (such as the Aran Islands and Killarney national park) and the Geology of Ireland.

History

thumb|Mountjoy House, the headquarters of Ordnance Survey Ireland, in the [[Phoenix Park, Dublin]]

Thomas Colby, the long-serving Director-General of the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain, was the first to suggest that the Ordnance Survey be used to map Ireland. A highly detailed survey of the whole of Ireland would be extremely useful for the British government, both as a key element in the process of levying local taxes based on land valuations and for military planning. In 1824, a committee was established under the direction of Thomas Spring Rice, MP for Limerick, to oversee the foundation of an Irish Ordnance Survey. Spring Rice believed in the importance of Irish involvement in the mapping process but was overruled by the Duke of Wellington, who did not believe Irish surveyors were qualified for the task. Instead, the Irish Ordnance Survey was initially staffed entirely by members of the British Army. The concrete triangulation posts built on the summits of many Irish mountains can still be seen to this day.

The Royal Engineer officers in charge of the operation were Thomas Colby and Lieutenant Thomas Larcom.

From 1922

thumb|Headquarters of Tailte Éireann (formerly the Ordnance Survey Office)

The British Ordnance Survey ceased to map Ireland just before the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 (the Partition of Ireland having already taken place in May 1921 upon the creation of Northern Ireland). The new Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI) officially came into existence on 1 January 1922, while the new Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OSI) came into being slightly later, on 1 April 1922.

The OSI was initially part of the Irish Army under the Department of Defence. All staff employed were military personnel until the 1970s, when the first civilian employees were recruited.

Cultural depiction

The national survey carried out between 1825 and 1846 is the focus of the 1981 play Translations by Brian Friel. The main theme is the inscription of Irish language place names in an anglicised form, using a phonetic rendering for British anglophone ears of an approximate Irish pronunciation.

See also

  • Irish grid reference system
  • Irish Transverse Mercator
  • State Agencies of the Republic of Ireland

References

;Notes

  • Andrews, J.H., A Paper landscape: the Ordnance Survey in nineteenth-century Ireland (Oxford, 1975).
  • McWilliams, P., "The Ordnance Survey Memoir of Ireland: Origins, Progress and Decline" (PhD thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2004).
  • Report on Ordnance Memoir (1843), HC 1844 (527) xxx, 259–385.
  • An Illustrated Record of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland (The O.S.I., Dublin, and the O.S.N.I., Belfast, 1991).
  • Official website of OSi
  • Official website of OSNI
  • Interactive Ordnance Survey Maps
  • Alternative Source of Land Registry Compliant Maps
  • Online Ordnance Survey Maps of County Clare
  • Online Ordnance Survey Maps of County Mayo
  • Online Ordnance Survey Maps of County Galway (unusable) try http://map.geohive.ie/
  • Online Ordnance Survey Maps of County Sligo
  • An eye on the Survey at History Ireland
  • 19th Century Ordnance Survey of Ireland at Translations
  • Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) 19th Century Historical Maps: collection of mainly 19th-century maps of almost 150 cities, towns, and villages in the Republic of Ireland. A UCD Digital Library Collection.
  • Geological Survey Maps Collection. Over 200 maps of Ireland 1859–1913. A UCD Digital Library Collection.
  • Historic Maps Collection. 18th and 19th-century historic maps of Ireland. A UCD Digital Library Collection.
  • Maps of Dublin accompanying Thom's Official Directory, printed by the Ordnance Survey for the Dublin publisher Alexander Thom from the six-inch map sheets 18 and 22, and dating from the late 19th century. A UCD Digital Library Collection.