14 January 2021
Go to release: COVID-19 Insight: Mobility During the Pandemic Week Ending 31 December 2020
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (14 January 2020) released the first of its COVID-19 Insight Series on Mobility During the Pandemic up to the week ending 31 December 2020.
This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Publication. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release. CSO Frontier Series may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. Publishing outputs under the Frontier series allows the CSO to provide useful new information to users and get informed feedback on these new methods and outputs, whilst at the same time ensuring that the limitations are well explained and understood.
In using the increasingly varied sources of data available, the CSO must ensure that we continue to protect and secure data. Our aim is to ensure that citizens can live in an informed society while at the same time ensuring adherence to all relevant data protection legislation.
Commenting on the release, Senior Statistican John Dunne said that: “The Staying Local Indicator (SLI) provides daily estimated percentages of county populations that have stayed within 10km of home, averaged over the preceding seven days.
The impact of Government restrictions on travel are clearly visible at national and county levels. Marked rises and falls in the SLI visibly reflect the imposition and relaxation of movement restriction policies at key dates throughout the year.”
Looking at county variations, Senior Statistican John Dunne further commented that: “Propensity to stay within 10km of residence tends to differ by county, as movement is impacted by local circumstances and conditions, such as access to services and levels of urbanisation. For example, Dublin, with a high level of urbanisation, consistently shows the highest percentage of persons staying local, while Roscommon and Mayo, with low levels of urbanisation, have the lowest percentage of persons staying within 10km of home.
Dublin showed the highest percentage of persons staying local of any county for the week ending 31 December, at 66%. This compares to the more rural counties such as Galway (48.7%), Mayo (48.2%), and Sligo (49.8%) with less than half the county population staying within 10km of their usual place of overnight residence. The State-weighted SLI average in the week ending 31 December was 57.4%.”
The Staying Local Indicator (SLI) provides daily estimated percentages of county populations that have stayed within 10km of home, averaged over the preceding seven days.
The Staying Local Indicator is based on statistical analysis of anonymised, aggregated, mobile phone activity records. Data from Three Ireland is collated from anonymised data sets at a macro scale, aggregated at Electoral Division and provided to the Department of Health. The scope of the arrangement between Three Ireland and the Department of Health is limited to informing the Government response to the COVID-19 pandemic only. This data feeds into wider selection of data used as part of the COVID-19 response. Only aggregated statistical data is provided to the Department of Health. No personal data is provided.
The CSO receives and manages this data on behalf of the Department of Health. Only aggregate data is provided by Three Ireland and at no time do either the Department of Health or the Central Statistics Office have access to personal data or individuals’ movements. The outputs from this analysis provide important insights for decision makers and the public in the midst of a global pandemic.
John Dunne (+353) 21 453 5499
or email John.Dunne@cso.ie
or email Aidan.Condron@cso.ie
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