Scottish Rural Communities Policy Review: stage 2 - Ireland case study

2. Ireland: The rural context

An estimated 36.3% of Ireland’s population is classified as rural^[1] (McHenry and Frost, 2023); in other words, located in settlements/areas of less than 1,500 people (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2020). Mapping the distribution of population across rural Ireland is possible using the Central Statistics Office of Ireland’s (CSO) six-tier rural-urban classification^[2] (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2019a); specifically, by the three-way subcategorisation of rural areas according to their dependence on urban areas. This typology was developed in the 2019 report Urban and Rural Life in Ireland. It uses place of work as a measure of distance to services and amenities, combined with population density from the 2016 Census. Highly Rural/Remote areas account for 8.8% of Ireland’s land area, Rural Areas with Moderate Urban Influence account for 12.5%, and Rural Areas with High Urban Influence account for 16.1% (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2019b). Although Highly Rural/Remote areas are spread throughout the country, these are predominantly found along the Atlantic seaboard and in the Border region. Though it accounts for a diminishing proportion of income for rural areas, land for agriculture is the dominant use of space across the Republic of Ireland (see Figure 1).

Source: adapted from Central Statistics Office Environmental Indicators Ireland 2023 (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2023b).

The overall population of Ireland is currently at its highest since 1851 at 5.1 million (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2023a). Rural Ireland’s experience of population change is highly influenced by access to larger towns and urban centres. Population growth has been experienced where access exists, whilst population shrinkage has been experienced where access does not exist due to remoteness (O’Driscoll et al., 2022a). Population loss is particularly evident in remote and peripheral areas in the midlands and west, and the areas losing population are generally clustered together (O’Driscoll et al., 2022b).

2.1 Employment in rural Ireland

Employment patterns in Ireland show the economic dominance of urban centres. In 2023 over a third of the population (35%) worked in Dublin City and County, followed by Cork, Galway and Limerick. Midland and Border region counties have the lowest percentage of workers due to lack of local industry and low populations (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2025). There is a prevailing regional imbalance experienced across the country, which affects rural areas specifically. Balanced regional development remains a policy target of Project Ireland 2040, the government’s long-term overarching development strategy to improve the country for all (Barrett and Curtis, 2024). The 2016 proportional incomes in rural Ireland from Nomenclature of Economic Activities (NACE) sectors by type are shown in Table 1 (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2019c). Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, Industry, Construction and Public Service, Education & Health as sectors contribute relatively more in all three types of rural areas when compared with overall national levels.

Despite the overall unemployment rate falling from 13% to 8% according to the 2022 census, rural areas have seen a consistent trend of an increased rate of at-risk-of-poverty (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2023a). More positively, the 2024 Central Statistics Office Ireland statistics indicate a reduction in poverty and deprivation rate in rural areas (Social Justice Ireland, 2025). However, household income remains lowest in the most rural areas and highest in cities (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2019c). This has been deemed a reflection of the quality of jobs available in rural areas (Monaghan, 2025). Historically in rural areas, the Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing sector was the dominant employer. However, in 2024 only 112,000 (96,500 males and 16,400 females) were employed in the sector (a decrease of 1.5% on 2023 figures) (Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2024). The need for better quality employment in rural Ireland to support sustainable population levels , as highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, has in part led to the emergence of a national remote working policy. The aim of this policy is to support remote working in a way that maximises benefits economically, socially and environmentally. A 2023 survey indicates that if people were able to relocate within Ireland, their preference would be to go to Galway, Cork, Kerry or Wicklow (McCarthy et al., 2023).

Source: Central Statistics Office Ireland, 2019c.

2.2 Economic challenges

Rural Ireland faces many challenges, including an older population, higher rates of part-time employment, lower median incomes, longer distances to everyday services, and higher poverty rates than the national average (Social Justice Ireland, 2021). To identify where solutions to these types of challenges are most needed, localised data in the form of HP (Haase and Pratschke, 2017) Deprivation Index maps are commissioned by Pobal^[3]. This social gradient tool is produced every five years using ten census data points and is publicly available on an open source^[4] basis. This tool identifies geographic disadvantage at the level of electoral division, subdividing the country using Tailte Eireann’s Small Area boundaries into 18,919 geographic units of around 100 households. As the ten census measures are consistently used, a longitudinal, localised picture is built. It is therefore possible to target resources and services to most in need communities, including sustainable rural development efforts. Key findings of the 2022 index are that, relatively, the geographic distribution of deprivation remains largely unchanged, pointing to disadvantage being a long term geographically entrenched phenomenon. Compared to the Southeast, more isolated rural areas situated in the Northwest of Ireland continue to have higher levels of deprivation, including Donegal, Mayo, and parts of Cavan, Leitrim, Longford and Roscommon (Pratschke and Quigley, 2023). To monitor the effectiveness of current rural development policy, the development of a composite indicator of rural development in Ireland has been suggested (Kelly, McGuinness and Devlin, 2024).