Increase of 2,400 families in Galway over past five years

There are over 2,400 more families living in Galway than five years ago, which marked a 4% increase, much higher than the national average, according to the latest Census analysis.

The breakdown of Census 2016 results has found that 63,368 families were living in County Galway.

Galway had a higher than average percentage of singles – 41.8% of people aged 15 and over living in the county were unmarried (85,380 people), which was above the 41.1% average rate in the State.

There were 2,918 Galwegians who had remarried. Males were much more likely to remarry after divorce, with 43.2% doing so, compared to just 29.6% of females.

The number of divorcees increased by 850 to 5,204, and accounted for 2.5% of those aged 15 and over.

Some 94,546 people (46.3%) were first-time married, marginally ahead of the national average of 46.0%.

There are 10,489 widows and widowers living here, which is just over 5% of the population.

There were 188 people in same sex partnerships in Galway, with 4,226 altogether across the State.

The number of people living alone increased by 1,031 to 22,079, which was 8.8% of all those living in private households. Of these, 8,434 were aged 65 and over, with women accounting for 59.3%.

Nationally, the report shows there were 1,218,370 families in the State on Census night in April 2016, an increase of 3.3% since 2011. The number of children per family remained unchanged at 1.38 children over the five years.

Since Census 1996, the number of families in the State has increased by 51%, with cohabiting couples showing an increase of 25.4%.