CSO figures reveal interesting population details of Louth's Local Electoral Areas

Figures released this week by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on the population of the country in 2021, have given some insights to the breakdown of the population of Louth, at a local authority level and also at a local electoral area (LEA) level.

Among the figures relating to Louth in the release, it estimates that in 2021 Dundalk South was the most populated LEA and had more males than females; there were 63,220 people at work; and 13,643 were students or pupils.

The CSO release, Irish Population Estimates from Administrative Data Sources (IPEADS), 2021, is a CSO Frontier Series Research Paper, that the CSO says, may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. It adds that particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in the release.

IPEADS 2021 does not produce population statistics for households or small areas, but improved inclusion of Eircodes across a number of key administrative datasets has led to 80% of records containing an Eircode up from 60% in 2020. As a result of this, an experimental LEA population is presented by the CSO for the first time.

Looking at the LEAs in Louth, in 2021 the population was estimated as follows:

• Dundalk-Carlingford, Louth -  28,721
• Dundalk South, Louth -  37,692
• Ardee, Louth -  26,773
• Drogheda Rural, Louth -  19,995
• Drogheda Urban, Louth -  32,364

The number of males and females in each was as follows:

The figures also give details on the Principal Economic Status of all the people in the area covered by Louth County Council. It reveals that there was 115,922 people aged 15 and over, 58,051 male and 57,871 female. 63,220 were at work; 13,643 were students or pupils; 8,092 were looking after home/family; 15,719 were retired; 4,069 unable to work due to permanent sickness or disability; 10,803 were unemployed; and 376 were not in the Labour Force.

Commenting on the release, Rob Kelly, Statistician in the Life Events and Demography Section, said: “This research paper, as the second iteration of Irish Population Estimates from Administrative Data Sources (IPEADS), continues to demonstrate the policy-relevant research projects the CSO is developing as part of its leadership role in the Irish Statistical System.

"While serving primarily as a means of demonstrating the potential of administrative data for delivering new classes of statistical products, IPEADS also demonstrates an experimental and evolving platform for the development of population estimates.

"It must also be emphasised that as an experimental methodology, IPEADS estimates must be interpreted with caution and are not comparable with official CSO population estimates such as Census data."