Kilkenny has lowest inward migration rate in country - Census

Kilkenny has been revealed as the Irish county with the lowest increase in population between 2016 and 2022, in preliminary results from last year’s census.

Kilkenny is also the county with the lowest inward migration per head of population.

Ahead of a swathe of information releases scheduled for this year, some initial facts and figures have already been published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Last year’s census took place on the night of Sunday, April 3. It had been six years since the previous census following a one year postponement of the census due in 2021 due to the Covid pandemic.
According to the first results from Census 2022 the population of Kilkenny rose from 99,232 in 2016 to 103,685 in 2022 (4,453 people).

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This was through a combination of ‘natural’ increase and inward migration and represents an overall increase in the population of 5%.
Three other counties also showed a population increase of just 5% - Tipperary, Donegal and Kerry.
In comparison, the biggest population increases between censuses was recorded in Longford (14%), Meath (13%) and Fingal and Kildare (both 11%).

The census also recorded the migration into the county. Kilkenny saw the lowest rate of people moving to the county, compared with all other counties in Ireland. While Co Monaghan had the lowest number of new arrivals (1,353) Kilkenny had the lowest rate of net inward migration per head of population. Just three new people arrived for every 1,000 residents (1,756).

The ‘natural increase’ of population during the same period was 2,697.
Longford recorded the highest average annual net inward migration of 16 persons per 1,000 of the population.

The drivers of population change are natural increase (births minus deaths) and net migration (immigration minus emigration). Births and deaths are registered which allows the calculation of natural increase between 2016 and 2022. Net migration can therefore be estimated as the residual of subtracting natural increase from the population change between censuses.

The total population increase between Census 2016 and 2022 was 361,671. Natural increase made up 171,338 of the change. The estimate for Net Migration therefore is 190,333.

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Housing
According to Census 2022 the housing stock in Co Kilkenny increase 5.2% between 2016 and 2022.
Nationally the increase in housing stock was equivalent to an average 1% rise per year between 2016 and 2022 while the population has risen by 1.2% per year over the same time scale.

Vacancy rates recorded in the census were those properties vacant on the night of the census itself. At a State level the vacancy rate has fallen to less than 8% in 2022, down from over 9% in 2016 and 12% in 2011.

In Kilkenny the rate was 7.7%, which was one of lowest county figures. Highest vacancy rates were recorded in the north west of the country. A detailed analysis of reasons is available on the CSO website.

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Detailed Results
Much more detailed results from the census will be published this year.
Census 2022 results will be published from Tuesday, May 30, beginning with a summary report.

A series of themed reports, Small Area Population Statistics (SAPS) and Place of Work, School, College - Census of Anonymised Records (POWSCAR) will follow. The thematic releases will be accompanied by detailed statistical tables.