The records of the Irish Land Commission stem from the Irish Land Purchase Acts (1881–1923), landmark legislation that enabled the transfer of land ownership from landlords to tenant farmers.

Today, these records are held by the Records Branch of the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine, but are not currently accessible to researchers.

To bridge this gap, the Irish Land Commission Index Cards, known as the Keane Index,  were created between 1969 and 1970 through a collaboration between the Irish Manuscripts Commission (IMC), the National Library of Ireland (NLI), and the Land Commission, with support from the Public Records Office of Ireland (now the National Archives) and the Registry of Deeds. Dr. Edward Keane, assigned by the Department of Education from the NLI to the Land Commission in March 1969, worked closely with the IMC to design the structure and scope of this ambitious indexing project.

Keane examined 8,447 boxes of papers relating to 9,343 estates and produced 36,000 index cards along with 35 bound volumes, each approximately 400 pages long. These volumes cover records accumulated under the Land Acts from 1891 to 1909. Fully cross-referenced, the index allows researchers to search by county, estate, or individual name. Each entry links to a corresponding “box number” in the Land Commission files. The physical index is available for consultation in the NLI’s Manuscripts Reading Room.

Learn more: https://www.nli.ie/news-stories/stories/tracing-irelands-land-history-digitisation-keane-index