Census 2011 - Changing but staying the same

The Census 2011 details published yesterday revealed a changed and changing Ireland. There are more of us — 4.58m, up 8.2% since 2006 — than at any time since just after the Great Famine.

Today, our society is far more diverse than imagined, even though 84% of us still describe ourselves as Catholic, representing an increase of almost 5%. This was driven primarily by Eastern Europeans moving here and a high birth rate, in European terms at least.

Though the majority of us declare our Catholicism, it might be difficult to have that statistic endorsed if the criteria laid down by Rome’s curia were strictly applied. It must be assumed that a great number of people who practise as à la carte Catholics have described themselves as such because the changing kaleidoscope of Irish family life includes so many arrangements unrecognised, if not opposed, in Catholic practice.

More than 200,000 people are divorced or separated, and 87,770 people were divorced as of last April, a 150% rise in a decade. Of the 1.18m families, 143,600 comprised cohabiting couples, there were 215,300 families headed by lone parents as well as 4,042 same-sex couples living together — 2,321 men and 1,721 women.

Our commitment to tradition was underlined by the fact that more Irish couples have married in recent times than in the years immediately prior to 2006. 143,588 more couples tied the knot in 2011 than in the previous five years. Whether this is down to Weddings By Franc or a dedication to the sacraments of the Catholic Church is, if we are to be honest, a valid question. Of course, many of these marriages were conducted outside the Catholic Church.

As this is the first post-Celtic Tiger census, it naturally reflects some of the excesses that have indebted generations to come. Ireland’s housing stock grew to almost two million homes, but nearly 300,000 were vacant on census night, up 27,880 in five years. As ever, the greatest proportion of empty homes was in the west, with 30% in Leitrim vacant, followed by Donegal (28%). The number of private households increased by 12.6% since 2006, to 1.65m.

Whether the Mahon Report, the troubling fiasco surrounding the transfer of garda killer Martin McDermott to a low-security prison and his subsequent escape, the warning from the Mid-Western Regional Hospital to stay away unless you’re at death’s door or the fact that, despite all the humbug about us all being in this crisis together, the head of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation — formerly Anglo Irish Bank — Mike Aynsley, was paid a package of €866,000 last year tells us more about our country than Census 2011 is a point not too hard to argue. We may take some titbit of consolation in the fact that one describes the engineering of our society, the other its machinations wise or otherwise.

Nevertheless, the framework skeleton outlined by Census 2011 points to changing needs and where planners might focus to make this society run more smoothly. It lays down challenges for our health and education programmes but also points to population growth trends Germany would far prefer than its own. We have been shown how we are changing and it is up to us to manage that change to create a society that can accommodate our needs and ambitions, our hopes and differences.