25% of Kildare-Meath houses built in six years - CSO

The Central Statistics Office said today that a quarter of the houses in Kildare and Meath were built in the six-year period between 1996 and 2002.

The office said in the towns of Sallins, Co Kildare and Ratoath, Co Meath, 70% of the dwellings were built during this period.

This information is contained in the final report of Census 2002 - Volume 13 - Housing, which gives further detailed results of the census conducted on 28 April 2002.

At the overall State level, approximately 197,000 dwellings, representing 15% of the total housing stock of 1.28 million dwellings, were built in the period 1996 to 2002.

This represents an annual average of close to 33,000 dwellings compared with 19,000 in the previous five-year period.

The 2002 census identified 110,000 occupied flats or apartments, representing 8.6% of all dwelling types. This was an increase of 6.5% from 1991.

Dublin City had the highest proportion of apartment living – 29% of its housing stock – while south Dublin, at 2.6%, had the lowest proportion.

Four out of five houses in rural areas were detached while in urban areas semi-detached dwellings, representing 40% of total dwellings, were the most common type of accommodation, followed by terraced houses (27%).

Owner-occupied dwellings continue to be the most widespread occupancy status. While the number of such dwellings increased by 22.7% between 1991 and 2002, their share of all housing units actually fell from 80.2% to 77.4% – 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.

At that stage there were over 124,000 Local Authority rented dwellings, representing 18.4% of the housing stock.

By 2002 the number of Local Authority dwellings had fallen to 88,000, representing a share of 6.9%.

Average weekly rents paid for furnished or partly-furnished private accommodation varied from nearly €250 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown to less than €100 on average for the three Ulster counties Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan.