How Ireland moves

Most people in Ireland still stay close to home

The single biggest finding is how local Irish life remains. About 61.8% of people travel to a destination inside their own local authority area, and another 8.4% work or study from home. Roughly a quarter, 24.9%, cross into a different local authority. A further 4.7% have no fixed place of work, and a small group, 0.2%, travel overseas.

That balance shifts enormously depending on where you live. In Donegal, 88.7% of people who have a fixed destination stay within the county, the highest rate in the country, followed by Kerry at 87.7% and Limerick at 87.2%. At the other end, Meath is the most outward-looking place in Ireland: only 56.8% of its commuters stay inside the county. South Dublin (57.9%), Fingal (57.9%) and Roscommon (58.8%) follow.

Dublin pulls in 165,000 people from outside the city region

Dublin City is the country’s great destination. It receives 217,820 people from other local authority areas, which is almost exactly the same number as the 217,903 who both live and work or study within the city boundary. Once outflows are counted, Dublin City has a net gain of 150,610 people, dwarfing every other area.

A large share of that comes from the rest of the capital. The largest single flow anywhere in Ireland runs from Fingal into Dublin City, with 56,076 people, followed by South Dublin to Dublin City (41,900) and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown to Dublin City (38,827).

Look beyond the four Dublin authorities and the commuter belt appears clearly. A total of 165,438 people travel into Dublin from outside the capital, led by:

• Kildare — 40,304 people
• Meath — 38,284
• Wicklow — 27,283
• Louth — 10,626
• Wexford — 5,624
• Westmeath — 4,594
• Laois — 4,572

Meath’s net loss of 37,365 people, Wicklow’s 21,358 and Kildare’s 15,421 are the arithmetic of the commuter belt: three counties that have added housing far faster than they have added the jobs and colleges to match.

Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford have commuter belts too

The regional cities repeat the pattern on a smaller scale. Cork City takes in 59,479 people from elsewhere, 50,038 of them from Cork County alone, the second-largest flow in the country. Galway City receives 37,285, with 26,537 arriving from Galway County. Limerick draws 35,153 from outside, led by 13,511 from Clare and 7,772 from Tipperary. Waterford takes in 15,122, with Kilkenny its biggest source at 6,529.

Clare’s position is a good illustration of how county borders hide real economies: it loses 12,358 people on net, most of them to a city 20 minutes from Ennis that happens to sit in a different local authority.

Working from home is a Dublin story

Home working is heavily concentrated in the capital and the cities. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown has the highest share in the country at 13.1%, followed by Dublin City at 11.4%, Fingal at 9.9% and Galway City at 9.5%. Leitrim, at 8.8%, is the only non-urban area near the top, which fits a broader pattern of remote workers relocating west.

“No fixed place of work” runs the other way, and is highest in Donegal and Leitrim, both at 6.2%, then Sligo at 5.9% and Carlow at 5.8%. These are the counties where construction, agriculture, haulage and mobile services make up more of the working day.

The border still shows up in the data

Some 10,259 people travel from the Republic into Northern Ireland, and more than half of them, 5,674, come from Donegal, a county whose road network and labour market have never really respected the border. Monaghan (1,118), Louth (934) and Cavan (538) account for most of the rest.

How to read the map

Line thickness shows the number of people making each journey, and circle size shows how many people stay inside their own area, the group that never appears as a line on a flow map but makes up most of the population. Teal shows people leaving a selected place; purple shows people arriving. Use the slider to hide smaller flows: at the default setting of 1,000 people, 137 of the 960 flows between areas are drawn.

Three destinations in the data have no location on the map, so they appear in the side panel only: work or study from home, no fixed place of work, and overseas. Boundaries are simplified for display, and Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary are each shown as single merged areas, matching how the source data names them.