Most Donegal homes recently built
Census 2022 reveals that there were 61,575 permanent private households in County Donegal last year – and most of them were built in recent decades.
The largest proportion of houses in Donegal by far were built during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ era; a building boom that would later reveal a crisis of defective blocks and cracking walls.
In the decade from 2001 to 2010 there were 18,653 private homes constructed, with 10,308 built during the preceding decade from 1991 to 2000.
That means almost half of all homes standing in Donegal today were built in the twenty-year period between 1991 and 2010.
Meanwhile the county has relatively few older buildings, with just 4,610 of homes [7 per cent] built before 1911.
Building rates have collapsed in more recent times, with just 5,000 homes built in Donegal over the last eleven years.
Some 70 per cent of households owned their own homes in Donegal in April last year, with an additional 23 per cent renting.
This compared with 66 per cent of households owning their homes national and 28 per cent renting.
There is no data yet for Donegal rental rates but the CSO does reveal that the average rent paid nationally last year was almost €275 per week, a rise of 37 per cent from 2016.
There were an average of 2.66 people per household in Donegal last year, down from 2.69 in 2016 and 2.75 in 2011. The national average household size was 2.74 people.
Meanwhile Donegal had the lowest percentage of renewable energy households across the country on just 4.6 per cent, comprising 2,822 homes. More than two-thirds of us had oil heating, with 41,393 homes in Donegal relying on oil compared to 3,048 households using electricity for heat and 7,060 using coal.
Only 466 homes in Donegal had no central heating system on Census day.
Less than half of homes in the county are hooked up to public sewerage systems, while 31,576 [51.2 per cent] have individual septic tanks.
Read more details about Census2022 and Inishowen in this week’s newspaper.