Next Thursday sees the publication of last year’s census results, a Christmas morning of gifts for statisticians.
Census 2011 was held on a sunny Sunday last April, and preliminary results were released in June. Those early figures revealed that about 100,000 more people were in the country than previously thought and put the population of the Republic at 4,581,269.
Thursday’s publication will be the first definitive results. Coming less than a year after census day, that suggests some impressive counting has been going on at the Central Statistics Office. At a time of net emigration, impressive birth rates and increasing longevity, this is the sort of data that will prove crucial in public planning.
Everything from education provision to transit planning and from healthcare budgeting to housing policy will be shaped by these results.
The publication of the first of two volumes of the census results will “include a limited number of tables of data along with detailed interpretation and analysis of the results accompanied by thematic maps and charts”, according to the CSO.
More granular publications, offering detailed findings on areas such as geographical analysis, socioeconomic changes, ethnicity and language diversity, education, health and family status will be published every three or four weeks throughout the year.
For more details, see cso.ie.
