Car usage:The vast majority of people are still using cars or other vehicles to get to work, according to the latest census figures.
It found a significant increase in car usage, coupled with a major drop in the number of children walking to school.
More than 57 per cent of all workers drove to work by car last year, a 2 per cent increase on 2002 figures. Fifteen years earlier, car drivers accounted for less than 39 per cent of commuters.
"The motor car is still king," said Aidan Punch, director of the Central Statistics Office, at the launch of the latest census 2006 findings yesterday.
He said when lorries and vans were included, almost 65 per cent of workers drove to work last year.
The percentage of people walking to work fell from 11.4 to 10.9 per cent in the past four years, while the proportion of cycling commuters also continued to fall. In 1991, 4.4 per cent were cycling to work. Last year just 1.9 per cent of workers took the bike.
There was also bad news for the bus, with its share of commuters falling from 6.7 to 6.1 per cent in the past four years.
The only positive news for public transport came in the form of Luas, which caused a 66 per cent increase in the number of people travelling to work by train in the past four years. However, the train still accounted for just 2.9 per cent of commuters.
The census also revealed that 55 per cent of primary school children were driven to school last year, compared with 27.7 per cent 15 years earlier. During that time, the percentage of primary school children walking to school fell from just under 40 per cent to 24.3 per cent.
Walking was the main mode of transport for third-level students, but the figures showed a 63 per cent increase in students driving to college when compared with 2002.
Four out of five households now own at least one car, an increase of 174,000 households within four years.
The commuter county of Meath had the highest proportion of households with at least one car (89.8 per cent), while Dublin city had the lowest car ownership rate at 59.5 per cent. Almost 35,000 households reported having four or more cars.
Despite the belief that people are commuting longer distances, the census found that the average distance travelled to work or school was 15.8km, a figure broadly in line with the 2002 figures. It may surprise some commuters to hear that the average journey time to work only increased by less than one minute, to 27.5 minutes, in the past four years.
However, the number of workers taking more than one hour to get to work increased from 142,500 to 187,000.
Almost 285,000 workers leave home before 7am to get to work, with more than half of those gone before 6.30am. Three out of four of these early commuters are men, while women dominate the 8am to 9am time slot, coinciding with the school run.
