The number of people in the State who have experienced marital breakdown is now almost 95,000, according to the latest details from the last census, in Cen- sus 96, Volume 2 - Ages and Marital Status. This includes 6,641 who remarried following dissolution of a previous marriage, 78,005 who described themselves as separated and 9,787 who said they were divorced. The census was taken before divorce legislation was introduced.
While most of these live in urban areas, they are by no means limited to cities and towns. More than 30,000 separated people, 3,208 divorced people and 2,244 who remarried live in the Dublin area. There are 8,345 separated people in Cork, 749 who remarried and 1,218 divorced. Limerick, Galway and Waterford also have figures for separated, divorced and remarried people which run well into four figures.
But even Co Leitrim, the most thinly populated county in Ireland, has 305 separated people, 76 divorced and 43 remarried following the dissolution of a previous marriage.
The highest proportion of separated people (9 per cent of the ever-married) was in Dublin and the second-highest (8 per cent) in Limerick. The lowest, at 3 per cent, was in Cos Roscommon and Cavan.
This census, like previous ones, shows a higher number of separated women than men. This may be accounted for by some separated men recording their status as married for tax or other reasons, or by them emigrating. For instance, the category "separated" includes a sub-category, "deserted". A total of 23,148 women described themselves as deserted, while only 6,363 men did.
The peak ages for marriage breakdown seem to be from the mid-30s to the mid-40s, with more women than men under 40 describing themselves as separated. The numbers of separated women are over 1,700 for every year of age between 35 and 47, while for men the peak ages (over 1,200) are between 29 and 48.
But marriage breakdown is not limited to over-30s. It is experienced by people as young as 17 - 11 men and four women were separated at this age. Twenty-five men and 42 women were separated by the age of 20.
There were just over one million children of school-going age (16) or under in the State in 1996. This included 250,000 under four, and therefore not in school.
The census also shows how some parts of the country are showing lower birth rates than others. For example, there were only 279 children under the age of one in Co Leitrim last year. This compares with 450 nine-year-olds. However, in Co Wicklow there were 1,512 under one, and 1,806 nine-year-olds, a much smaller gap.
This reflects the loss by Leitrim of its child-bearing population. While there is a bulge of people aged between 10 and 18, the number of people starts to decline over this age, and there are fewer people aged between 18 and 35 than over 35 in the county.
In Dublin, however, the opposite is the case, with a bulge in the 20-25 age-group. There are 21,022 people aged 23, and only 14,191 aged 40 in the city and county.
The census shows the continuing shift from rural to urban areas. Of the 3,626,087 people living in the State almost one million, 952,692, live in the greater Dublin area. There are 360,609 in the county borough areas of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, and an equivalent number, 380,522, live in towns of 10,000 or over, about half the total population living in urban conurbations of 10,000 people and more.
Another 206,346 live in towns over 5,000 in population and 414,168 live in towns below that and above 1,500 in size.
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