Designation of Areas

Census Mapping 2011

To carry out the Census, every dwelling and place of habitation has to be identified, contact made with the householder and forms delivered and collected by a Census Enumerator.  To achieve this, the country was divided and mapped into 4,866 ‘Enumeration Areas’, each containing approximately 420 dwellings.

Using a ‘Geographical Information System’ the Enumeration Areas (EA) were created by combining a number of adjacent Small Areas together. The Small Areas were created by Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI) and the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis in consultation with the CSO.  Each Small Area contains between 75 and 150 households and will be smallest geographic area for which 2011 Census Results will be published.

Each EA map shows the location of known dwellings, small area and townland boundaries and large scale OSI background mapping.
All map printing was carried out in CSO with a total of approximately 18,000 map sheets i.e. over 10 square kilometers of paper!

EA map being printed

Maps being sorted for distribution to Census Enumerators.

A member of staff using the GIS application to create an EA map