Population of Louth close to 150,000

Figures released this week by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on the population of the country in 2022, 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 2022 Dundalk South was the most populated LEA and had more males than females; there were 64,955 people at work; and 14,341 were students or pupils, while the average age in the county was 37.5 and the population of the county was 148,932.

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 2022 does not produce population statistics for households. However, improved inclusion of Eircodes across a number of key administrative datasets has led to over 90% of records containing an Eircode up from 80% in 2021 and 60% in 2020.

Looking at the LEAs in Louth, in 2022 the population was estimated as follows:

• Dundalk-Carlingford, Louth -  29,261
• Dundalk South, Louth -  39,669
• Ardee, Louth -  27,719
• Drogheda Rural, Louth -  20,672
• Drogheda Urban, Louth -  31, 611

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 118,871 people aged 15 and over, 59, 272 male and 59,599 female. 

64,955 were at work; 14,341 were students or pupils; 7,659 were looking after home/family; 16,312 were retired; 3,909 unable to work due to permanent sickness or disability; 11,213 were unemployed; and 482 were not in the Labour Force.

Commenting on the release, Cathal Doherty, Statistician in the Life Events and Demography Section, said:

“This Research Paper, as the third 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 National Data Ecosystem. 

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

“As part of the CSO's Frontier Series that uses experimental methodology, it must also be emphasised that IPEADS' estimates must be interpreted with caution and are not comparable with official CSO population estimates such as Census data."