Deprivation map Ireland — Pobal HP Deprivation Index

Ireland's most affluent electoral division scores 17.5 on the Pobal deprivation index; its most deprived scores -44.92 — a 62.4-point gulf in education, employment, and housing tenure between two parts of the same country. The data is below.

What the Pobal HP Index measures

Most deprived areas in Ireland — Census 2022

These electoral divisions have the lowest Pobal HP scores in Ireland. Limerick city accounts for most of the extreme end, with Dublin City and Waterford city also represented.

Most affluent areas in Ireland — Census 2022

These electoral divisions have the highest Pobal HP scores in Ireland. South Dublin — Dublin City and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown together — accounts for most of the top scores, alongside parts of Cork.

Counties with significant deprivation — explore the data

These counties hold the highest concentration of deprived electoral divisions. Each county profile shows how deprivation spreads across local areas — alongside unemployment, housing, and education data from Census 2022.

What drives the deprivation score

• Education component: share of the population with third-level qualifications versus early school leaving rates. This is the strongest single predictor of an area's trajectory.
• Employment component: professional and managerial occupations versus semi-skilled and unskilled, plus the unemployment rate. It captures economic structure — not just whether people have jobs.
• Housing component: owner-occupied versus renting, plus housing age and quality signals from census responses. Tenure is a reliable proxy for wealth.

Deprivation and housing — the connection

Unemployment is the sharpest divide: EDs scoring below −15 average around 9% unemployment, versus under 4% in EDs scoring above +15. Housing tenure tells a more specific story than a simple owner/renter split — overall home ownership is broadly similar across the deprivation spectrum (roughly 50–55% either way), but the composition differs. Private renting is actually low in the most deprived areas (around 10%); social housing is where the gap opens up, at roughly 28% in the most deprived EDs.

Using IrelandInsights as a Pobal maps alternative

Pobal's HP Deprivation Index used to live behind Pobal's own mapping tool. IrelandInsights maps the same Census 2022 data at electoral division level across all 26 counties — and adds context layers the original viewer never had:

• Overlay unemployment, education, or housing tenure directly alongside the deprivation score — the components that build the index.
• County and national context on hover — see how any ED compares to its county average and the national baseline.
• Live housing cost data alongside census deprivation — showing where affordability stress and deprivation hit at the same time.
• Switch between metrics — move between deprivation, age structure, population growth, and Irish language data on a single map.

That 62.4-point spread — from the most deprived ED in the country to the most affluent — exceeds Ireland's gap with the EU average on almost every social indicator. The map makes that geography impossible to ignore.

← Housing crisis by area  ·  Average rent by county →  ·  Home ownership rates →

Where to live in Ireland →  ·  Unemployment map →  ·  Education levels →