In Census 2022, individuals were asked how many cars or vans were owned by, or available for use by, any member of their household. For cohesion across the text ‘with a car’ and ‘without a car’ will be used throughout this chapter to refer to whether a car or van was available for use by any member of the household. Cases where use of a car was not stated are excluded from this analysis.
Use of a car is presented by CSO Local Electoral Area, Administrative County, County, NUTS-3 Region, Type of Urban and Rural Area, and HSE Health Regions (and nested HSE geographies). The statistics in this chapter relate to individuals, not households. See Background Notes for more details.
Nationally, individuals without a car had shorter median distances to health services than those with a car across all service types. This pattern was evident for both regional and local health services, though the differences were more pronounced for regional services.
For regional health services, the differences were most apparent among the quarter of individuals who lived furthest from regional health services (upper quartile). One in four individuals with a car lived more than 25.7 km from their nearest HSE General Hospital, compared with 16.0 km for one in four individuals without a car, a difference of 9.7 km. A similar pattern was observed for HSE Emergency Departments, where one in four individuals with a car lived more than 30.5 km from their nearest service, compared with 20.4 km for those without a car, a difference of 10.1 km.
For primary care services, differences between the two groups were smaller. Half of all individuals without a car lived within 0.6 km of their nearest Pharmacy, 0.7 km of their nearest GP and 2.1 km of their nearest HSE Primary Care Centre. The corresponding distances for those with a car were 1.2 km, 1.4 km and 4.8 km respectively, approximately twice the distance across all three services.
Distances to primary care services were notably high in some Local Electoral Areas (LEAs) amongst those with no car. In four LEAs, half of all individuals without a car lived more than 5.0 km from their nearest Pharmacy: Belmullet in Mayo (10.9 km), Kilmuckridge in Wexford (8.0 km), Conamara North in Galway (5.8 km) and Conamara South in Galway (5.6 km). Within Belmullet, 25% of individuals with no car lived over 16.9 km from a Pharmacy.
A similar pattern was observed for distance to GP’s, with four LEAs recording median distances of more than 5.0 km for individuals without a car: Ballymahon in Longford (9.1 km), Portlaw-Kilmacthomas in Waterford (9.0 km), Belmullet in Mayo (8.2 km) and Kilmuckridge in Wexford (7.8 km).
Kilrush in Clare had the largest difference in distance between individuals with and without a car of any LEA, with half of all individuals with a car located more than 7.0 km from their nearest Pharmacy, compared with 0.9 km for those without a car.
Within ‘Cities’, individuals without a car generally had slightly shorter median distances to health services than those with a car. For three in four individuals, the nearest Pharmacy was within 1.0 km for those with a car and 0.7 km for those without a car.
In ‘Highly rural/remote areas’, individuals without a car had shorter median distances to primary care services than those with a car - consistent with the pattern observed at State level. Half of all individuals without a car lived within 3.3 km of their nearest Pharmacy and 3.8 km of their nearest GP, compared with 5.9 km for both services among those with a car. For HSE Primary Care Centres, median distances were more comparable: 15.0 km for those without a car and 14.5 km for those with a car.
For the upper quartile of individuals, distances were considerably higher - one in four individuals without a car in ‘Highly rural/remote areas’ lived more than 8.2 km from their nearest Pharmacy and more than 8.3 km from their nearest GP.
Half of all individuals without a car in the HSE West and North West Health Region lived more than 5.7 km from their nearest HSE Primary Care Centre, compared with a national median of 2.1 km. One in four individuals without a car in this HSE West and North West Health Region lived more than 2.4 km from their nearest GP and more than 1.9 km from their nearest Pharmacy.
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