The Archaeological Survey of Ireland is a unit of the National Monuments Service, which is currently managed by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
[4] The compilation of the Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) started in 1982 with per-county lists that were completed in 1992.
[6][7] In 1982, the Commissioners of Public Works decided to publish a series of archaeological inventories, designed to be comprehensive listings of all sites but providing only very brief summaries.
The inventories came with the hope to raise awareness for the monuments to defend against the increasing destruction of vulnerable sites.
[13] The dataset has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence which, however, does not cover third party materials like the maps of the Ordnance Survey Ireland.