Population Distribution

Settlement is concentrated heavily around the east and south coasts. The major metropolitan areas include Belfast, Cork and Dublin. After Dublin, eastern Ulster has the highest population density in Ireland.

Northern Ireland is more densely populated than most of the island, with 30% of Irish people living within its borders. A million people live in counties Antrim and Down alone. The area around Belfast Lough is very densely populated, and includes 6 towns of over 20,000 inhabitants (Bangor, Belfast, Carrickfergus, Lisburn, Newtownabbey and Newtownards).

In the Irish Republic, Dublin county has been growing explosively in recent decades, reaching 1,000,000 people by the 1981 census. Dublin city proper had 860,000 inhabitants at the last census. Today it is a sprawling mixture of factories, housing estates and commerical centres. Today 1 in 5 Irish people live in Dublin county. The country has 9 towns of over 20,000 inhabitants (Bray, Cork, Drogheda, Dublin, Dundalk, Dún Laoghaire, Galway, Limerick and Waterford).

By contrast, population on the west coast is very sparse. This can be attributed both to the proximity of the east coast to the economic markets of Britain and to the fact that the best agricultural land lies to the east. The east was also the first area to be settled by each wave of invaders - Celts, Vikings, Normans and English. The map above shows the density of population in Ireland in the period 1992 to 1996.

The map on the left shows the distribution pattern of the 94 Irish towns which have over 5000 inhabitants. This map clearly shows the concentrations of towns in eastern Northern Ireland and around Dublin. You can also see the more isolated cities of Galway, Limerick and Cork. Note how few settlements there are in Connaught compared to Leinster.

Ireland, despite its historically rural culture, is becoming increasingly urbanised. While it is still not nearly as urbanised as other European areas, the figures are rising. In Northern Ireland, 70.3% of the population live in towns of 1000 or more people. In the Republic of Ireland, the figure is 57.7%.

To help you visualise the distribution of population in Ireland, imagine that the entire population reduced to just 10 people. At that scale, 3 people would live in Northern Ireland. Of those 3, 1 would live in county Antrim, 1 in county Down and 1 in the remaining 4 counties. Of the 7 people in the Irish Republic, 2 would live in Dublin county and 2 in the rest of Leinster. 2 more people would live in Munster. The final person would live in Connaught and the rest of Ulster.

Population Change

Ireland was in a state of negative population growth from the time of the Great Famine of the mid 1840s until as recently as the 1960s. The population recorded in the 1841 census was 8.12 million, which dropped to 4.46 million by the turn of the century. It reached an all time low of 4.23 million in 1926, after which it began a slow recovery. Today the population of the island stands at 5.16 million. The graph below summarises this trend. This trend is attributable to the large numbers of Irish who left Ireland to escape the famine, often choosing to go to America, and the number who left in following decades in seek of work, mainly in Britain. The population only started to rise again in the 1960s when the Irish economy finally came of age, but it will be decades yet before the population reaches the levels of the 19th century.

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*Combines the 1936 figure for the Republic of Ireland and the 1937 figure for Northern Ireland.

Population of Settlements in Ireland

The summary list below gives the populations of all 72 towns in Ireland that have at least 7000 inhabitants. These figures were derived from the 1991 Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland Censuses. Towns in italics are in Northern Ireland. Towns in standard type are in the Republic of Ireland.

* Comprises Dublin County Borough (478,389) and Greater Dublin Suburbs (381,587)
** The Belfast Urban Area, which includes Belfast LGD and parts of Newtownabbey, Castlereagh, Lisburn and North Down LGDs.
¹ Pronounced "Dun Leery". The "gh" is silent.
² Pronounced "Port Leesh"
³ Pronounced "Cove". In Ireland, "bh" is always pronounced "v".