By Cate McCurry, PA
People living in 21 counties in Ireland continued to travel further than 10km from their home, new statistics show.
Carlow and Roscommon are among the counties with the lowest percentage of people staying within 10km of home in the last week of February.
The counties with the lowest number of people staying local often have low levels of urbanisation and access to services.
Data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows that there continues to be a relaxation in adherence to Covid-19 travel restrictions.
An estimated 63.6% of the population stayed local (within 10km of home) during the seven-day period ending 31 March 2021 according to the Staying Local Indicator (SLI), a seven-day rolling averagehttps://t.co/rt2QDDUbR2#CSOIreland #Ireland #COVIDIreland #Health #SocialImpact pic.twitter.com/xpDAyhHs0T
— Central Statistics Office Ireland (@CSOIreland) April 12, 2021
The tenth Staying Local Indicator (SLI) uses anonymised mobile phone activity records to measure the public’s movements across seven days.
It found that some 63.6 per cent of the population stayed local – within 10km of home – during the week ending March 31st.
Figures from the CSO show that all counties showed SLI decreases in the last week of March, ranging from 1.6 percentage points in Dublin to 0.2 percentage points in Longford, Roscommon and Wexford, indicating some relaxation of mobility behaviour.
Donegal and Kerry showed no SLI change from the week ending March 24th to the week ending March 31st, holding at 54.1 per cent and 57 per cent respectively.
Mayo showed a modest SLI increase of 0.4 percentage points during the same time period, and Leitrim and Sligo both showed slight increases of 0.1 percentage points over the same period.
Dublin continues to be the county with the highest percentage of the population staying local at 77.9 per cent, reflecting its urbanised nature and access to services compared to other counties.
The SLI provides daily estimated percentages of county populations that have stayed within 10km of home, averaged over the preceding seven days.
