CENSUS 2016 REVEALS AGING COUNTY IN SLIGO
OLDER RESIDENTS AND SMALLER HOUSEHOLDS AMONG SLIGO STATISTICS REVEALED IN FIRST 2016 CENSUS REPORT
WE’RE getting older, more of us are separated or divorced, more of us have broadband and we typically live in households of 2 people in a detached house - that’s the picture of Sligo taken by the Census on April 24th 2016.
In the first of a series of 13 reports that are due to be published this year, it reveals Sligo’s population has grown marginally by 0.2% to 65,535 since Census 2011. The population of Ireland now stands at 4,761,865, an increase of 173,613 people ( 3.8%) over the past five years.
Our average age in Sligo rose over five years from 37.9 years in April 2011 to 39.2 years in April 2016. Nationally, the average age of the population was 37.4, up from 36.1 in April 2011. The number of men aged 65 and over increased by 22% to 296,837, while the number of women aged 65 and over increased by 16.7% to 340,730.
There were 805 more women than men in Sligo at 33,170 compared to 32,365 men. There were 53,009 more women than men in the State in April 2016, giving an overall sex ratio of 97.8 men for every 100 women, a slight decline on the 2011 ratio of 98.1.
More people are separating or getting divorced but no more than the rest of the country - 3,088 people were divorced/ separated in Sligo, a rate of 4.7%, the same as the national rate of 4.7%.
The number of divorced people in Ireland has increased to 103,895 ( 18%) since 2011. The number of separated people increased slightly to 118,178 ( from 116,194 in 2011).
Many of us are still speaking Irish, with 608 people in Sligo speaking our native tongue daily outside of school and 1,438 speaking it weekly. That’s out of 25,196 people in Sligo who stated that they could speak Irish. Nationally, 1,761,420 people stated that they were able to speak Irish, with 73,803 speaking Irish daily outside of school and 111,473 doing so weekly.
There are over 7% fewer members of the Traveller Community living in Sligo since 2011 - 386 Travellers resided in Sligo in April 2016.
Nationally, the number of people enumerated as Irish Travellers increased by 5.1% to 30,987.
More households here have access to Broadband - 16,267 homes in Sligo had broadband in April 2016, an increase of 13.7% since April 2011. 2,256 dwellings had non- broadband internet access, an increase of 14.1 %, while the number of dwellings with no internet access fell by 25.4% to 5,566.
The percentage of our population who were non- Irish nationals in Sligo last April stood at 9.3 per cent. OUt of 24,831 households, the most common type was detached with an average of 2.6 residents.