CSO figures reveal 772 Irish Travellers living in County Louth

THE latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows there are 772 Irish Travellers living in County Louth.

The latest profile from Census 2016 reveals that this is an increase of 17.2% (113) on the number of travellers recorded in the county in 2011 (659).

They made up just over 1 in 200 (0.6%) of the county’s population, compared with 0.7% at national level.

There were more female (401) than male (371) Travellers in Louth as of April 2016, according to the figures.

Just over 4 in 10 (41.1%) of all Travellers in the county were aged under 20, compared to just under 3 in 10 (29.7%) of the county’s overall population.

In April 2016, those who indicated a ‘White Irish’ ethnic or cultural background amounted to 106,053 people (83.0% of the country’s population), an increase of 1,045 on 2011.

The next largest grouping ‘Any Other White background’ accounted for 9,988 persons (7.8%), an increase of 1,390.

Those with ‘Black or Black Irish (African/any other Black background)’ comprised 3,567 persons (2.8%) while 2,399 persons (1.9%) indicated an ‘Asian or Asian Irish (Chinese/any other Asian background)’. A further 1,756 (1.4%) stated they were of ‘Other, including mixed background’ while 3,176 (2.5%) did not state their ethnic/ cultural background.

Meanwhile, the number of people practicing Catholicism in the county has fallen although Catholicism remains the predominant religion in County Louth, accounting for 81.6% (105,186) of Louth’s population in April 2016, according to the figures. This was down from 106,845 persons five years previously.

Nationally, the total number of Catholics has also fallen since 2011, with Catholics comprising 78.3% of the population in April 2016, down from 84.2% in 2011, while the number of people with no religion (including atheists and agnostics) increased by 73.6% to stand at 481,388 in 2016.

The average age of Catholics in county Louth was 37.3 years, compared with the overall average age of 36.4 years. As with the State overall, the next largest group was those with no religion. In 2011, the 5,414 people with no religion comprised 4.4% of the county’s population. By 2016, this had increased to 9,747 people comprising 7.6% of the country’s population. Their average age was 33.1 years, making them 3.3 years younger on average than the county’s population overall.

The 2,079 Church of Ireland members in the county made up 1.6% of its total population. On average, Church of Ireland members in Louth were 1.8 years older (38.2 years) than the overall population in the county. Muslims (1,825) and Orthodox (1,471) completed the top five.