Ireland's towns by population

Amtmann · 01-12-2010 2:46pm #1

Excluding towns in Northern Ireland, as well as Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford, what are Ireland's largest towns ranked by population? I'm eager to see the most recent figures. This is taken from 2006; are newer stats available?

richardjjd · 01-12-2010 3:25pm

That's the last census for which detailed information is available.

CSO publish projections for 2009-2025 (e.g. see here) but these are only by region, rather than town.

The last detailed information available from the CSO (here) gives very detailed information for all town populations - again for 2006.

teekayd25 · 01-12-2010 6:54pm

I fancy Dundalk to reclaim top spot from Drogheda, similar to what's happened between their football clubs :cool:

Sponge Bob · 02-12-2010 1:52am

Limerick is quite a bit bigger than Galway, and feck the stupido stats. Always was. I won't say always will be

Aidan1 · 02-12-2010 10:35am

http://census.cso.ie/Census/TableViewer/tableView.aspx?ReportId=111833

This is the best source I've been able to find - it gives the total population of towns, including suburbs and Environs (hence Limerick has 20,000 more people than Galway, as per Herr SquarePants). It should also be noted that, for spatial planning purposes, some LAs use larger regions still, so the Cork Area Strategic Plan uses the 'harbour region', with upwards of 350,000 people in it.

Also worth noting that as of 2006, about half of the population live in towns of 10,000 people or larger.

richardjjd · 02-12-2010 10:57am

I am confused as to what differentiates a town from a suburb. Within Fingal, Swords (population 33,000) is a town but Blanchardstown (population c.60,000) is a suburb.

Aidan1 · 02-12-2010 12:04pm

'Town' (like city) is a legal definition; in this case Swords is the County Town of Fingal, but Blanchardstown lacks that legal status. In essence, the historical towns with UDC/Town Commissioner status were all regularised as having 'Town Councils' (or Borough Councils) in 2001.

The 2001 Local Government Act is the pertinent piece;

http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/acts/2001/a3701.pdf

(Although Swords was made County Town by the 1994 Act).

Blanch is 'just' a village in that context.

loyatemu · 02-12-2010 2:52pm

Aidan1 wrote: »

'Town' (like city) is a legal definition; in this case Swords is the County Town of Fingal, but Blanchardstown lacks that legal status. In essence, the historical towns with UDC/Town Commissioner status were all regularised as having 'Town Councils' (or Borough Councils) in 2001.

The 2001 Local Government Act is the pertinent piece;

http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/acts/2001/a3701.pdf

(Although Swords was made County Town by the 1994 Act).

Blanch is 'just' a village in that context.

The CSO also include what they call "environs" in the data (in that table at least) - so areas outside the local council area that are nonetheless contiguous with the urban area.

In the case of Greystones, where I live, this includes Delgany & Charlesland. The likes of Tallaght and Blanch are all rolled into the "Dublin & suburbs" population.

JupiterKid · 02-12-2010 4:41pm

Blanchardstown is not really seen as separate "town", despite the intentions of the 1967 Miles Wright Report and the 1972 Dublin County Development Plan - the same goes for Lucan, Clondalkin and Tallaght - they are all just very large suburbs physically joined to the contiguous built up area of Dublin.

Lucan was classed as a separate town by the CSO until 1996. Indeed Lucan was physically separate from suburban Dublin but it merged into Dublin in the 1990s and early 2000s - via the "new" Lucan disticts.

I wouldn't be surprised in the 2011 census if Navan reaches or even tops Drogheda's and Dundalk's population. The failure of Sligo to grow is appalling and should be an embarrassment to the local authorities responsible. I'd suspect the rural remewal tax incentives stunted Sligo's growth. For shame.

Mike 1972 · 15-12-2010 10:32am

Because of the haphazard way in which towns are allowed to expand coupled with the hopelessly infrequent updating of offical urban boundries these figures are often pretty misleading anyway.

Large areas of many towns lie outside the official urban boundary while the "enviorns of" boundaries tend to go to the other extreme and often include places several tens of kilometres from the urban boundary.

Plus theres the argument over whether places like Blanchardstown, Lucan or even Swords should be considered towns in their own right or suburbs of Dublin.

Over in Poland the boundaries of each urban area are clearly marked with roadsigns and seem to be based on something akin to reality.

Aard · 16-12-2010 8:33am

@richardjjd:
It has to do with space between urban areas. There are fields between Dublin and Swords, but Dublin-Blanchardstown is contiguous. I think the rule is 200m.

teekayd25 · 16-12-2010 10:44am

Interesting also how that wiki list takes account of some towns' "environs" but not others, for instance the town of Abbeyfeale would seemingly make the top 100 if its environs figure was included

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbeyfeale

Birr's environs happen to be included, but not, for example, Loughrea's.

Aidan1 · 16-12-2010 11:37am

I'd suspect the rural remewal tax incentives stunted Sligo's growth. For shame.

Spot on. The willingness of County Councillors in Sligo, Donegal, Leitrim and even Mayo to zone land for housing all over the place, together with uncontrolled one off (urban generated) rural housing, and unnecessary and distorting tax breaks have been the death knell for urban centres in the North West.

This has obvious consequences. There was a story in the press earlier in the week about a report prepared by the WDC, wailing about the demographic breakdown of emigration. In short, unlike much of the rest of the country, the BMW region is losing far more women than men, an unwelcome return to a previous pattern of emigration which has obvious consequences for long term population levels. The nice lady from the WDC noted on the radio that they couldn't be sure of the reasons for this. My arse. The reasons are well known and understood, and remain the same over the last century. Employment for women is concentrated in the service, retail and administrative sectors. These economic activities are largely urban focussed, hence the failure to develop vibrant sustainable urban centres in these areas means that there are far fewer jobs available for women than would otherwise have been the case.

DWCommuter · 16-12-2010 4:10pm

Aidan1 wrote: »

Spot on. The willingness of County Councillors in Sligo, Donegal, Leitrim and even Mayo to zone land for housing all over the place, together with uncontrolled one off (urban generated) rural housing, and unnecessary and distorting tax breaks have been the death knell for urban centres in the North West.

This has obvious consequences. There was a story in the press earlier in the week about a report prepared by the WDC, wailing about the demographic breakdown of emigration. In short, unlike much of the rest of the country, the BMW region is losing far more women than men, an unwelcome return to a previous pattern of emigration which has obvious consequences for long term population levels. The nice lady from the WDC noted on the radio that they couldn't be sure of the reasons for this. My arse. The reasons are well known and understood, and remain the same over the last century. Employment for women is concentrated in the service, retail and administrative sectors. These economic activities are largely urban focussed, hence the failure to develop vibrant sustainable urban centres in these areas means that there are far fewer jobs available for women than would otherwise have been the case.

+1.

Aard · 16-12-2010 4:38pm

teekayd25 wrote: »

Interesting also how that wiki list takes account of some towns' "environs" but not others, for instance the town of Abbeyfeale would seemingly make the top 100 if its environs figure was included

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbeyfeale

Birr's environs happen to be included, but not, for example, Loughrea's.

Don't blame Wikipedia; they just quote word-for-word without analysis what CSO has published.

Ireland's towns by population

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