Survey shows Irish feel safe as houses
Public safety and crime levels are among twelve key indicators of quality of life, according to the Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
So, one of the more disturbing results of the foundation’s 26,000 “quality of life” interviews conducted across 28 countries in Europe, was the high number of Europe’s citizens who were concerned about their safety at night.
The levels of concern were much higher in urban areas than in rural areas. And safety fears were also more prevalent in the new EU member states. Only 2% felt unsafe in rural Austria, in contrast to 78% in urban Lithuania.
In Austria, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and France, three times as many people in urban areas felt insecure, compared with people in rural areas.
When Irish people were asked how safe they thought it was to walk around their area at night, only 6% of rural dwellers, and 14% of urban dwellers, said it was very unsafe, or rather unsafe. In the UK, by comparison, 29% of rural dwellers and 35% of urban dwellers felt it was dangerous to be out at night.
In the “open countryside” part of the rural category in the survey, 62% of Irish rural dwellers felt very safe, compared to only 24% in Irish cities or city suburbs.
Of the rural Irish people interviewed for this survey, 30% lived in open countryside, and 24% in a village or small town.
About 20% said they worked in farming or food production.
In Ireland, 31% of people in the open countryside reported that they rented or owned land for farming or production of food, compared with only 2% in villages and small towns.
Irish rural dwellers said their average working week in their primary employment was 41 hours, compared to 39.6 in urban Ireland. A significant number of rural people here felt they did not have enough time for hobbies.
And only 3% of open countryside dwellers in Ireland said they had used the internet in the previous month.
In the six countries where this question was asked, only Latvia had a lower response.
Internet use by open countryside dwellers ranged from 12% in Austria to 2% in Latvia. It was 7% in France, 12% in Belgium and 4% in Portugal.
Asked if they had used the internet in the past month, two out of three in rural Ireland said no, compared to 48% of urban respondents.
Action is needed to improve internet use in rural Ireland, according to the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, which conducted the survey. The foundation suggests bringing broadband to rural areas, and opening more internet cafés in small villages. This could also improve social networks in areas deprived of post offices and banks.
Our fellow Europeans may be surfing the net rather than observing their religious practices. Across 28 countries, 22% in rural areas said they attended church at least weekly, compared with 17% of urban people.
The highest church attendances were registered in Ireland and Italy, followed by Poland, Slovakia, Malta and Turkey. Church-going is markedly higher in the rural areas of Ireland, Austria, Greece, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.
Asked if they attended church once a week or more often, 56% in rural Ireland and 35% in urban areas said yes. Estonia and Bulgaria had the fewest church-goers, at about 3%.
