Census figures: Cycling increase

THIS week’s report by the Central Statistics Office proves that Ireland is a country increasingly on the move.

The census, conducted in April 2016, shows that the number of people travelling to work, school, or college stood at 2,962,550, an increase of 9.3% on 2011.

Of course, they were not all literally standing: While there were large and welcome increases in bus and train use, the standout feature is the 43% increase in people commuting by bicycle.

Most of this additional cycling has been in Dublin, where almost 39,000 people claim to pedal their way to work or school, while Cork and its suburbs lag well behind with

2,330.

The census highlights what is likely to be a significant change in employment or semi-employment patterns.

The number of people who say they work from home was up by 14% to almost 95,000, while 174,000 said they had no fixed place of work, up 26,000, or 18%, on 2011.

For that, we can thank, or not, the gig economy.