On 14 October 2025, the CSO released Income Analysis Using Administrative Data Sources. This frontier release was based on linked administrative income data with the 2022 Census population living in private households. Equivalised income estimates from this publication were linked to household geolocation data, allowing distances to Transport Services to be analysed by income level.
Equivalised income allows for more meaningful comparisons of income across households by adjusting for the number of adults and children living in the household, enabling analysis at an individual level. Equivalised income is then grouped into ten equal bands (deciles), in ascending order of income. When interpreting results by individual characteristics, it should be noted that equivalised income reflects the combined income of all household members. In this chapter, income deciles are defined using the national distribution of equivalised household income. When presenting results at lower levels of geography, individuals remain classified according to their national income decile; income deciles are not recalculated within each geographic area. Further information is provided in the Background Notes of this release.
At State level, differences in median distances to transport services across income deciles were generally small. For example, the median distance to ‘Fuel Stations’ was 1.4 km for both individuals in the lowest income decile and those in the highest income decile. Excluding ‘LUAS Stops’ and ‘Bike Share Stations excl. Dockless Bikes’, which are only available in limited locations, the largest income-related differences were observed for ‘Rail Stops’ and ‘High Frequency Rail Stops’. For ‘High Frequency Rail Stops’, individuals in the lowest income decile had a median distance of 6.7 km, compared with 4.2 km among those in the highest income decile, indicating that lower-income individuals generally lived farther from these services.
Median distances to the nearest public transport stop were consistent across the income distribution at 0.6 km for all income deciles, with a marginal reduction to 0.5 km in the highest income decile. The most notable variation was amongst upper quartile values, where one in four households in the middle income deciles (fifth to eighth) were more than 1.7 km from their nearest public transport stop, compared with 1.0 km for those in the highest income decile.
In Galway County, individuals with income in the lowest decile had a median distance of 17.6 km to ‘Rail Stops’, while individuals with income in the highest decile had a median distance of 10.9 km.
In Longford, individuals in the highest income decile had a median distance of 5.0 km to ‘High Frequency Bus Stops’, more than double the median distance for those in the lowest income decile (1.9 km). Similarly, in Longford, the median distance to ‘Fuel Stations’ was substantially higher among individuals in the highest income decile (3.4 km) than among those in the lowest income decile (1.1 km), with distances being approximately three times greater in the highest income decile.
Tipperary and Galway County exhibited contrasting patterns in relation to ‘High Frequency Bus Stops’. In Tipperary, individuals in the lowest income decile had a median distance of 3.4 km to ‘High Frequency Bus Stops’, compared with 5.0 km among those in the highest income decile. Conversely, in Galway County, individuals in the lowest income decile had a median distance of 4.6 km, compared with 3.0 km for those in the highest income decile.
For the purposes of Local Authority elections, each county and city are divided into Local Electoral Areas (LEAs). For further information see Census 2022 Small Area Population Statistics.
Individuals in the lowest income decile in Roscrea-Templemore, Tipperary, had a median distance of 6.8 km to ‘High Frequency Bus Stops’, compared with 11.6 km among those in the highest income decile. A similar pattern was observed in Arklow, Wicklow (2.1 km versus 6.8 km) and Edenderry, Offaly (2.5 km versus 6.4 km), where individuals in higher income deciles had greater median distances to ‘High Frequency Bus Stops’. In contrast, the opposite pattern was evident in Conamara North, Galway and Belmullet, Mayo. In Conamara North, individuals in the highest income decile had a median distance of 3.5 km to ‘High Frequency Bus Stops’, compared with 7.0 km among those in the lowest income decile, while the corresponding figures for Belmullet were 21.9 km and 25.1 km, respectively.
In Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, individuals in the lowest income decile had substantially lower median distances to several transport services than those in the highest income decile. For ‘All Public Transport Stops’ and ‘Bus Stops’, the median distance was 1.1 km for individuals in the lowest income decile, compared with 4.2 km for those in the highest income decile. A similar pattern was observed for ‘Fuel Stations’, where the median distance was 1.9 km among individuals in the lowest income decile and 4.9 km among those in the highest income decile. In each case, median distances for the highest income decile were approximately three to four times greater than those for the lowest income decile.
This section uses the six-category urban and rural classification set out in the CSO release Urban and Rural Life in Ireland, 2025.
In ‘Highly rural/remote areas’, individuals in the lowest income decile had a median distance of 8.3 km, compared with 7.6 km among those in the highest income decile, a difference of 0.7 km. At the urban-rural classification level, differences in median distances to ‘All High Frequency Stops’ between the lowest and highest income deciles were relatively small. Similar patterns were observed in ‘Rural areas with high urban influence ‘(4.6 km versus 3.9 km) and ‘Rural areas with moderate urban influence’ (6.6 km versus 5.9 km), where individuals in the lowest income decile had slightly greater median distances than those in the highest income decile.
The largest income-related differences in median distances to rail services were observed in ‘Highly rural/ remote areas’. For ‘Rail Stops’, individuals in the lowest income decile had a median distance of 32.6 km, compared with 22.4 km among those in the highest income decile, a difference of 10.2 km. A similar pattern was observed for ‘High Frequency Rail Stops’, where the median distance was 33.5 km for individuals in the lowest income decile and 23.8 km for those in the highest income decile, representing a difference of 9.7 km.
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