My Department has engaged with the Land Development Agency on the interpretation of the Land Development Agency Act 2021 in light of changes to CSO methodology.
Section 4 of the Act defines a census town as "the area of a town (including all the environs of the town for the purpose of the census of population concerned) the population of which, when rounded to the nearest 500 as shown in the latest census report of the Central Statistics Office, is equal to or greater than 10,000 persons;"
A census town is used to identify relevant public lands which must be offered to the Land Development Agency prior to their disposal and which have certain requirements with respect to the required level of social and affordable housing if developed in future.
It is the view of my Department that as the CSO has discontinued the use of Settlements (including towns) as a statistical product and replaced it with the new statistical product of "Built Up Area", that references to "towns" in the Act should be interpreted as "Built Up Areas". Under this interpretation, the LDA will use the urban boundaries as defined by this new methodology to identify "relevant public lands".
As such, the urban area names for the five statutory cities are as follows:
1. Dublin City and Suburbs
2. Cork City and Suburbs
3. Limerick City and Suburbs
4. Galway City and Suburbs
5. Waterford City and Suburbs
Tailte Éireann have produced maps of the new boundaries which are referenced as 'CSO Urban Areas - National Statistical Boundaries - 2022 - Ungeneralised' and can be found at data-osi.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/osi::cso-urban-areas-national-statistical-boundaries-2022-ungeneralised/about.
My Department will seek to update the terminology used in the Act at the next opportunity to better reflect the nomenclature in use by the CSO as part of the Census.
