We spoke to Nova Sharkey, a Statistician with the Central Statistics Office (CSO), who recently produced the CSO’s Recreation in Nature - How We Spent Summer 2024 release, to get a better understanding of how people in Ireland enjoy our natural environment.
Most people like to spend time outdoors as they feel it improves their physical and mental health. It’s clear from our respondents that people in Ireland feel being outdoors has a very positive impact on their well-being as nearly nine in ten people felt happier after spending time in nature and 82% felt less stressed and/or anxious.
Other popular reasons for being outside were to get fresh air or take a break, and almost one in five people spent time outdoors walking a dog.
It seems we really do like to be beside the seaside. Ireland is world-renowned for its diverse and beautiful coastline, from rocky, rugged cliffs to long, sandy beaches, and our love of the seaside was reflected in the survey results. Four in five people visited the coast at least once last summer, with more than a quarter visiting a beach or coastline once a week or more. The seaside was also the most popular destination for overnight trips, with 64% of people visiting a coastal area overnight to enjoy nature.
Looking at same-day visits to nature, people enjoyed a range of activities, with the most popular being walking (80%), appreciating scenery (40%), and eating or drinking out (28%). This echoed the findings of a 2021 Visits to Nature release which found similar results among households.
In summer 2024, urban greenspaces or parks were the most popular natural areas overall, with 86% of people having made at least one same day visit to such spaces, rising to 90% for people who live in an urban area.
Unsurprisingly, the most common barrier to spending time outdoors was the Irish weather, with nearly a quarter of people saying that bad weather stopped them from enjoying time outside.
Interestingly, bad weather was far more likely to be a factor for younger people: 40% of those aged between 16 and 29 named bad weather as a barrier, compared with just 8% of 60- to 69-year-olds.
Aside from the unreliability of our weather, insufficient infrastructure was also a commonly reported barrier. One in five people stated that a lack of reliable public transport prevented them from spending time outdoors. This was more likely to be an obstacle for younger people, with 36% of those aged between 16 and 29 saying a lack of public transport was a barrier, compared with 11% of 60- to-69-year-olds.
More than one in ten people cited a lack of safe footpaths as an issue, with 21% of those living in a rural area saying that a lack of safe footpaths was a barrier, compared with 8% of people living in an urban area.
Having said that, around half of respondents did not feel that there were any barriers to spending time outdoors.
There’s no doubt that it did. The CSO conducted a Pulse Survey in April-May 2022 on how we spend our time outdoors. CSO Pulse Surveys are short, online surveys and are not nationally representative, but they can give relevant and insightful data. Of the more than 9,000 people who took part in that survey, almost one in ten said they took up a new activity during COVID-19, and 98% said they liked to spend time outdoors.
The most popular activities were hill walking, hiking, running, cycling, and sea swimming, which would suggest a desire to spend more time in nature. People also spent more time in their gardens than pre-pandemic, with more than one-third of respondents starting at least one new gardening activity during the pandemic.
Whether people will continue to pursue these activities into the future remains to be seen, but our recent CSO Pulse Survey COVID-19 - Our Lives Five Years On: Social Impact asked people about their general exercise habits, and a third of the more than 21,000 people who took part said their frequency of exercise had increased since before COVID-19 restrictions were introduced in March 2020. A near equal number said their frequency of exercise had either decreased or had not changed.
Whatever the weather may hold, it seems people in Ireland really value spending time outdoors.
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Editor's Note
We hope this article gives you an overview of the wealth of data in our Recreation in Nature series of releases. We plan to publish another release on this topic later this summer, which will focus on the respondents’ most recent same-day and overnight trips in terms of their distance travelled and expenditure.