Families with Children — Census family lifecycle and tenure
Small Areas ranked on the published Census 2022 share of families at child-rearing lifecycle stages, plus owner occupation.
Target homes
50,000
Residential delivery addresses
Actual homes selected
50,067
67 over target (whole areas only)
Official Small Areas
416
of 17,967 scorable CSO Small Areas in scope
Counties covered
22
These Small Areas have the highest published share of FAMILIES at the pre-school, early-school, pre-adolescent and adolescent lifecycle stages, combined with a high share of owner-occupied households. Families and households are different Census units: the family share is a share of all families in the area, and the tenure share is a share of all private households. No child population share is used, because Census age bands are not fully loaded for every Small Area.
Where the audience is
Each shape is one Census Small Area in the selection, shaded by score. 416 of 416 selected Small Areas are drawn from the official published CSO Small Area boundaries.
CSO Small Areas - National Statistical Boundaries 2022 (Ungeneralised), published by Tailte Éireann under CC BY 4.0.
How the audience scores
Figures are weighted by the number of eligible homes in each selected Small Area, compared with the benchmark: All scorable Small Areas in Ireland.
Families at child-rearing lifecycle stages
70% of scorePublished family_cycle_families keys pre_school + early_school + pre_adolescent + adolescent, divided by ALL published family cycle stages (pre_family, pre_school, early_school, pre_adolescent, adolescent, adult, empty_nest, retired). This is a share of families, not of households or of people.
Owner-occupied households
30% of scoreOwner occupied (with or without mortgage) divided by all private households.
County breakdown
| County | Small Areas | Homes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| dublin | 160 | 18,894 | |
| cork | 69 | 9,127 | |
| meath | 51 | 6,183 | |
| kildare | 49 | 5,595 | |
| wicklow | 24 | 3,714 | |
| galway | 9 | 983 | |
| laois | 7 | 690 | |
| waterford | 5 | 545 | |
| louth | 5 | 529 | |
| kilkenny | 5 | 517 | |
| limerick | 5 | 471 | |
| tipperary | 4 | 467 |
Showing the top 12 of 22 counties. The full breakdown is in the summary PDF.
Methodology and limitations
How areas are selected
- Every Census Small Area with a usable published value for all scoring components is scored, then ranked highest first (ties broken by Small Area reference).
- Whole official Small Areas are added until the running total of eligible homes first reaches the target of 50,000. Nothing is split, capped or padded, so the actual total lands at 50,067.
- Census 2022 publishes 18,919 Small Areas. SmartPOST address data resolves to 18,877 internal address-coverage units, which map onto 17,973 distinct official CSO Small Area codes (95.0% of published Small Areas). 17 internal units carry no official Small Area code and are excluded entirely. Scoring, ranking and selection are done once per official Small Area code, and every internal unit mapped to a selected code is included, so no address is counted twice and no official area is half-selected. 17,967 official Small Areas in scope have a usable published value for every scoring component; the rest are excluded from ranking rather than counted as zero. Known limitation: the internal-unit to official-code mapping is many-to-one and is not re-derived here, so official areas whose addresses are split across internal units are selected as a whole official area.
Which addresses count
- Active Eircode address records only (retired records excluded).
- Residential building use only — business, mixed-use and unknown use excluded.
- Addresses flagged as under construction or derelict are excluded.
- Addresses recorded as vacant ARE included, because the letterbox exists.
- Only addresses that carry a Census Small Area reference can be selected.
What this report cannot tell you
- Census figures describe areas, not households or individuals. No income, wealth or euro threshold is used or implied anywhere in this report.
- Percentages shown are area averages weighted by eligible homes - they are estimates for the selection, not counts of matched people.
- Map shapes are the official published CSO Small Area boundaries. Where one is unavailable, an approximate address-coverage outline is drawn and labelled as such.
- This is an illustrative sample. Your real campaign audience is confirmed with SmartPOST before anything is booked or delivered.
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