THE population of Ireland has decreased steadily from I84I to the present day. One of the main exports of the country has been men and women, especially to the United States until I93I and to Great Britain up to the present.' In this paper the character of some of the poorest regions in the country, known since I89I as the congested districts, will be discussed, and it will be seen that the loss of population bears no general correlation with poverty in natural resources. The 26 counties that form Eire had a population of 6,528,799 in 1841 and 2,968,420 in I936, a decrease of 54.2 per cent. Only one area showed an increase, Dublin, city and county, with I57 per cent of its I84I population; and only two counties, Kildare and Louth, both in the east, had in I936 more than half their I84I popula-