The Central Statistics Office has published Census 2022 Profile 1 Population Distribution and Movements.

This is the first in a series of eight thematic profiles which will provide detailed results on specific areas of Census 2022. Profile 1 concentrates on the distribution of the population across our towns and cities, the place of birth of the usual residents of each county, and population movements into, within, and out of each county since 2016.

Profile 1 shows that in April 2022, there were 49 towns in Ireland with a population of 10,000 people or more. A further 164 towns had a population of 1,500 – 10,000 people.

The national press release is available here –https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/pressreleases/2023pressreleases/pressstatementcensus2022resultsprofile1-populationdistributionandmovements/

Navan was the biggest town in the county, with a population of 33,886 in April 2022.

Further details of specific results relating to Meath are available here –  https://www.cso.ie/en/census/census2022/census2022profile1countypressstatements/

Further thematic profiles will be published across the rest of the year –https://www.cso.ie/en/census/census2022/census2022publicationschedule/

Please note that a new urban geography called Built Up Areas (BUAs) has been used to produce Census 2022 data for urban areas.   As BUAs have been defined differently to the Settlements used in Census 2016, it is not possible to compare them directly. For further information on the BUAs please see https://www.cso.ie/en/census/census2022/census2022urbanboundariesandbuiltupareas/