The urban sprawl in the commuter belt around Dublin has increased dramatically in the past ten years, census figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) today have shown.
A quarter of the housing stock in counties Kildare and Meath was built since 1996 and in the towns of Sallins in Kildare and Ratoath in Meath, 70 per cent of houses were built during the same period.
This information is contained in the final report of Census 2002 - which gives further detailed results of the Census done on April 28th, 2002.
The report also shows a move towards apartment living - according to the figures, there were 110,000 occupied flats or apartments in 2002, representing 8.6 per cent of all dwelling types - up from 6.5 per cent in 1991.
A third of these apartments were built since 1991. Apartment living varied considerably from county to county, however. Dublin City had the highest proportion - 29 per cent of its housing stock - while South Dublin (2.6 per cent) had the lowest proportion.
The report shows the number of new households being created is outstripping population growth in the period since 1961 when the population of the State was at its lowest level of 2.8 million.
During this period the urban population has grown by 1.5 per cent per annum while the number of private households in urban areas has grown by 2.4 per cent per annum. The corresponding average annual increases for rural areas were 0.1 per cent for population and 0.7 per cent for households.
Owner-occupied dwellings continue to be the most prevalent occupancy status.
Although the number of such dwellings increased by 22.7 per cent (from 807,000 to 991,000) between 1991 and 2002, their share of all housing units actually fell from 80.2 per cent to 77.4 per cent - the first time such a decline was recorded in recent decades.
The number of Local Authority rented dwellings has declined at each census since 1961. In 1961 there were over 124,000 Local Authority rented dwellings, representing 18.4 per cent of the housing stock. By 2002 the number of Local Authority dwellings had fallen to 88,000, representing a share of 6.9 per cent.
The level of rented accommodation has almost doubled (from 71,000 to 141,000) between 1991 and 2002, following declines observed during the previous 30 years. One in nine dwellings at State level are now rented privately.
Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan are the cheapest places to rent, the figures show, while Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is the most expensive.
Average weekly rents paid for furnished or partly furnished private accommodation is nearly €250 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown to less than €100 on average for the three Ulster counties of Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan.
