About the data — sources and methodology

IrelandInsights.ie builds entirely on official Irish government and public data. We invent, interpolate, or infer nothing. Every number on the map links to a primary source.

Primary data sources

• Census 2022 — CSO Ireland — Electoral division and small area statistics for population, housing tenure, education, employment, commuting, age, and household composition. Covers 3,420 EDs and 19,000+ small areas. The Central Statistics Office publishes this under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
• Property Price Register — PSRA — Residential property transactions since 2010. We use this for price trend analysis. The Property Services Regulatory Authority publishes it.
• Rent data — RTB — Rental market data by area. The Residential Tenancies Board publishes it.
• General election results — Houses of the Oireachtas — 2024 (34th Dáil) and 2020 (33rd Dáil) results by constituency. We verify all figures against the official Oireachtas result books: electorate, turnout, seats, and party composition. Turnout uses the official total-poll basis (valid + spoilt ballots / electorate). The 2020 results cover the full 39-constituency set on its 2017-review boundaries. The 2024 results cover the 43 constituencies of the 2023 review. Current TD listings come from the Oireachtas Members API and may differ from election-day results after by-elections.
• Local election results — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage — 2024 and 2019 results for all 166 local electoral areas. We verify these against the official results books ("Local Elections — Results, Transfers of Votes and Statistics"). LEA turnout uses the valid-poll basis (valid ballots / electorate), following the official books' summary tables. Where seat counts tie between parties, we claim no single "leading party".
• Deprivation Index — Pobal — HP Deprivation Index 2022, built from Census 2022 indicators of disadvantage at small area level.
• Transport — Transport for Ireland / NTA — GTFS bus and rail data for route mapping and stop locations.
• Weather — Met Éireann / Open-Meteo — Current conditions and rainfall data by location.
• Building Energy Ratings — CSO / SEAI — County-level BER certificate counts and band distributions (A1–G) from CSO PxStat table EBA02 (Domestic Building Energy Rating). The data covers the certified stock only — about 5% of Irish homes have been assessed, mainly those on sale or rental. Source: cso.ie/ber
• Residential retrofits — SEAI — County-level counts of SEAI-supported residential property upgrades from the SEAI National Retrofit Plan Full Year Report. This covers the Better Energy Homes scheme, Warmer Homes scheme, Solar PV scheme, and National Home Energy Upgrade Scheme (One Stop Shops). We express retrofit rates per 1,000 households, using Census 2022 household counts as the denominator. Source: seai.ie/retrofit
• Boundaries — Tailte Éireann (OSi) / CSO — Electoral division, county, constituency, local electoral area, and small area boundary geometries from official statutory boundary datasets. Election layers use the boundary vintage in force at each election. We only show cross-year comparisons where boundaries are materially identical — no comparisons cross the 2023 constituency redrawing.

Geography definitions

• Electoral Division (ED) — The primary unit of analysis. Ireland has 3,420 EDs, each covering 60–2,000 households. The CSO publishes Census 2022 data for most topics at this level — it is the finest geographic level available.
• Small Area (SA) — Sub-ED units of about 60–120 households. We use these for deprivation scoring and selected census topics.
• County — We compute county figures from the underlying ED data, not from CSO county summaries. This keeps them consistent with the ED layer.
• Constituency — Dáil constituencies. The 2024 general election used the 43 constituencies (174 TDs) of the 2023 boundary review. The 2020 election used the previous 39-constituency set (160 TDs). We show each election on its own boundaries and suppress cross-boundary comparisons rather than estimate them.
• Local Electoral Area (LEA) — The 166 LEAs used at the 2019 and 2024 local elections. No LEA boundary orders changed between the two elections, so cross-year local comparisons use identical boundaries.

Update frequency

• Census data — Updates when a new census is published. Current data is Census 2022 (published 2023–2024). The next Irish census is due 2027.
• Property prices — Updates regularly from the Property Price Register and RTB datasets.
• Election results — Updates after each general election. Current data covers the November 2024 and February 2020 elections.
• BER data — IrelandInsights refreshes from CSO EBA02 at server startup and caches the result. Current data covers certificates issued to end of the displayed year.
• Retrofit data — Updates annually when SEAI publishes the National Retrofit Plan Full Year Report (typically Q1 of the following year). Current data is from the 2024 Full Year Report.
• Weather and transport — Live data with caching. Weather refreshes every few minutes; transport data follows GTFS schedule publications.

What this site is not

• This is not a CSO product. IrelandInsights.ie is an independent map built on CSO open data.
• We show only aggregate statistics at geographic level — never data about individual people.
• Electoral division boundaries change between censuses. Comparisons between 2016 and 2022 may reflect boundary changes, not just population change.

Disclaimer, licence and accuracy

IrelandInsights.ie is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Central Statistics Office, the Houses of the Oireachtas, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Electoral Commission (An Coimisiún Toghcháin), Tailte Éireann, the Property Services Regulatory Authority, the Residential Tenancies Board, Pobal, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, the National Transport Authority, or Met Éireann.

We reuse data from those bodies' official open-data publications under each source's own terms — CSO data (census, rent, affordability, building energy ratings) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence; the Property Price Register under the PSRA's Re-use of Public Sector Information terms; Houses of the Oireachtas results under the Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence; and other sources under their respective open-data licences. The official records are the authoritative source.

We have reformatted, filtered, aggregated, and paginated the data for display. It may not reflect the most current or complete official record. We provide it “as is”, without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent permitted by the applicable open-data licences and law. Always check the official source before relying on a figure.