Waterford Cencus 2022

A 5th TD!

Have we not suffered enough?

Time for a Waterford/South Kilkenny constituency. The county boundaries are not giving accurate population records of some towns and cities such as Waterford, Limerick, Drogheda that border neighboring counties. Time to redraw a few maps to get correct representation and population records.

It's crazy alright, Waterford local authority should really include all of Ferrybank & Slieverue, maybe even Kilmacow. I wonder is there a way to leave the county boundaries the same to keep the hurlers happy but still bring these areas into Waterford local authority and electoral area.

In fairness though, playing devils advocate, the one piece of Ferrybank which Waterford control they knocked half the village and built a motorway through it so maybe there's a reason a lot of Ferrybank people are happy to stay in KK....

Majority of people living in Ferrybank are fully aware that Kilkenny CoCo have no regard for Ferrybank itself, its seen as a cash cow for the county, the shopping centre is an example of this and look at the mess that is. Ferrybank is a suburb of Waterford City and should be governed by Waterford. Ferrybank would not exist in its form today if the city wasn't there.

BUT HURLING ! <que JP Phelan comparing us to Nazis again>

It's frustrating that as the city and county council are merged there are no specific city figures for the moment from the CSO. I had some spare time on my hands so I made a stab at putting them together from the electoral district figures given in the preliminary report. It seems that the city has been driving the overall big county population growth. The city growth seems to be nearly 13% compared to the overall figure for city and county of 9.4%. This in itself is the 5th highest growth rate in the state.

I wasn't too sure which electoral districts were part of the city before the councils were merged so the below table might not be 100% correct in terms of areas included. The figures are taken directly from the CSO though. Let me know if I need to add to delete anything. Regardless of that, I think it's safe to assume that Waterford is now by far the fastest growing city in the state, over double the rate of Galway, reversing a decades old trend. The table then adds the Co. Kilkenny suburbs which will also be done by the CSO in a later report next year. The city and suburbs are now nearly 60,000 and by adding Tramore, the metropolitan area will be over 70,000.

It a very positive result for Waterford and hopefully it will help to ensure that we get the share of state resources that we are entitled to.

Everything will be done to keep the citys population as low as possible to justify the lack of investment and delivery. Tramore Waterford City West is combined for local elections but they count Tramore separate for census, this makes no sense. The LEA map should be the city boundary like a Greater Waterford area.

Excellent work.

there is a serious ‘chip on the shoulder’ tone in a lot of the posts on this topic……politicians and now it seems the CSO are conspiring to keep ‘waterford down’ etc…Galway/cork get everything…….the glass is always ‘half empty’….😡😡

Unfortunately decades of evidence suggest the contrary. The SE region has been continually undermined to move resources elsewhere. For healthcare purposes the region ended in the middle of Kilkenny while resources were diverted to Cork. For education, it was suggested by Simon Harris that Wicklow is in the SE and that it should be part of the region to share the Technological University resources. Carrick on Suir for example is now part of the Mid West region.

I agree it's not a CSO or government conspiracy though, it comes from the regions politicians' attitude that anything going to Waterford is bad for them. Brendan Howlin and Phil Hogan were two SE politicians that had a real chance to improve the regions prospects but rather than giving resources to Waterford they were happy to see them go elsewhere.

The census figures confirm that Waterford is the only place in the SE to generate the critical mass to compete with the other regions. I know people tend to concentrate on the negatives but like I agree, the figures can only be viewed in a positive light. I'm a glass 'half full' person and I haven't been 'home' in a while. Looking forward to a visit next week!

Theres no chip on our shoulders here! Its a reality that we experience here of being discriminated on whether it be in healthcare, Education, transportation, Employment, the list goes on. Galway benefited for years with the "poor west" hand outs. On a positive note great to see Waterfords population growing so quickly, time for the government to actually deliver here and the South East.

Shannon is not included in Limerick metro figures .

Well it says here for example it is. Pretty clear example of what I wrote above.

Any chance of some discussion regarding the census?

Population growth of 7.6% nationally continues population growth which started in the 1990s. However, the counties in Leinster around Dublin continue to far outstrip the national levels, and only Offaly and Kilkenny grew by less than the national average.

On average almost 32,000 people a year moved or returned to the State between 2016 and 2022. It'd be interesting to see if Waterford had large numbers returning from emigration or if new arrivals accounted for the increase, or a mixture of both.

All but one of the 39 Dáil constituencies now have more than 30,000 people represented by a TD. Ireland is apparently highly over-respresented in comparison to other countries, so there may be a debate as to how many we actually need as the population will keep growing.

Nationally the number of constituents per TD is 32,032, while in Waterford it's now 31,771. I think there's 22 constituencies with a higher population per TD than Waterford, including local rivals like Carlow/Kilkenny, Wexford, Tipperary and most of Cork.

Waterford's population will continue to grow and it's time to start planning ahead as infrastructure can take 20+ years to be built with the planning involved. It's a good sign that agencies like the NTA were just recently announcing efforts to map out what types of transport etc. will be required over that timeframe.

I'd like to see much more density in Waterford and I feel the Council should be restricting new development outside of the ring road to encourage more infill and less sprawl.

That wouldn't be my understanding of infill. I'd be talking about sites in the city centre like the gasworks site.

If they're determined to pump more houses into these locations there should also be some investment in things like schools and public transport.

What about whataboutery? Come on pal, the preliminary results are only just released.

Just to pick up one of your points, the Irish population has grown exponentially since the 1960s - by around 80% in fact. However, in the 2016 census Waterford grew by just 2.1%, well below the national figure of 3.8%. This time Waterford is well ahead of the national average.

But the census will give much more relevant information to enable future planning like what mix of industries are here, ethnic diversity, household composition, geographic spread, religion, income levels, fertility rates etc.

Please let's avoid another classic 'everyone is out to keep Waterford down' threads, and maybe instead we can discuss the actual results of the census.

I share your frustration somewhat about 'everyone is out to keep Waterford down' threads. It has been done to death and they can be depressing but it doesn't mean the issues can/should be ignored. I agree with BBM77 that it's important to discuss the Census with reference to the public policy issues. Otherwise it's just statistical analysis.

Even with the relatively low growth of previous census results Waterford in the context of the SE region, had the population to justify educational and medical resources that were taken for granted in other regions. The catchment area for UHW for example was artificially constrained and ended half way into Co KK. This was deliberate policy to direct resources elsewhere. In this context, the large increase in Waterford's population will at least make this more difficult to do. We should still be able to highlight the issues though.

In terms of the results themselves, I agree that building up density is important. In previous Census some of the city centre areas had decreases in population. This census shows big increases; for example Ballybricken West up 34%, Bilberry 15%, Centre A 16%, Centre B 25%, Custom House A 27%, Custom House B 22%, The Glen 36%. Now these are for relatively small absolute numbers but the trend is good. If the north quays gets up and running? well we won't go there!

It's interesting also that the Kilbarry population has exploded by 239%. While not in the centre, it is positive for density in the city. Previously I suspect a lot of this growth would have gone to Tramore, Kilmeaden etc

Overall the results are very positive and instead of looking over our shoulders at the likes of Drogheda we can have a realistic aspiration of competing with Limerick and Galway. It as always requires that the politicians of the region acting in unison. There are some signs of that in relation to the Airport. I won't hold by breath though.

To a large extent though it doesn't come down to population, but being an attractive place to live with good employment prospects and access to services. We're much closer to that now that when I was growing up.

On reading the list of electoral divisions in the city I think you have left out Ballymaclode, the area around the River Cottage pub (Orpens) which contains 1301 people. When added to your figures this brings the population (incluidng co Kilkenny suburbs which CSO will include anyway) to over 60,000.

What sort of issues?

Cheers azimuth17. I wasn't sure and suspected that it wasn't 100% correct. I'll add Ballymaclode when I get a chance.

Apologies, a final edit as I've seen from an older Census when the city was an independent entity that Killotern should be excluded. It had small numbers so doesn't make much difference. It does reduce the error between quoted figures in the 2016 final report and the 2016 figures that CSO included in the 2022 preliminary report, to 40, which is statistically insignificant. It may have been due to small revisions made by the CSO between each census

I'm confident now that it's pretty much spot on and once I started it's important to get it right. The end.

Still confusing for the cities of Limerick and Waterford as there is technically no city/county boundary anymore with the amalgamation of the city and county councils, this surely needs to be clarified since Cork & Galway have clear boundaries. Another mess by Big Phil.

I used to spend a lot of time crunching numbers like this but resposnibilities deny me the time. Good work dude! Or dudess if that is the case......

Thanks to The CW for the above. As was said, the methodology for showing town and city population has changed which means that a direct comparison is not made in the census between the 'settlements' populations which was used in the 2016 census, and the Built Up Areas (BUA) which is now being used. (They are quite close in most cases though). However, an appendix given does show what the 'like for like' population of each town city would have been using the 2016 methodology. I've included those figures in the above table.

When showing increases I've used the 2022 BUA compared to the 2016 Settlements which is not directly comparable but does give a good indication of growth. Waterford's growth has been very strong and has matched Carlow and Navan which in affect are now overspill areas from Dublin. It is well above the other cities in the country and the largest town Drogheda.

Interestingly Carlow has now overtaken Kilkenny in population.

All the information in the tables above are in the latest census release but had to be put together. Later in the year the small area statistics will be published which will show the information in a similar format to above. However as I said the CSO probably won't show percentage changes due to the change in methodology. For some reason today's release concentrates on towns and largely ignores the cities.This will also be addressed in later publications. Feel free to point out any errors in the information provided and I can correct it.