Here are some statistics taken from the 2011 Census on people with disabilities in Ireland today:

• Taken from Central Statistics Office’s Profile 8 Our Bill of Health – Health, Disability and Carers in Ireland
• Statistics taken from 2011 Census
• Available online at: http://www.cso.ie/en/census/census2011reports/census2011profile8ourbillofhealth-healthdisabilityandcarersinireland/
• Published 01 November 2012

Numbers:

• 595,335 people with a disability, equalling 13% of the population

Geography:

• Limerick city had the highest rate of disability with 18.2%;
• Cork 17.7%;
• Waterford 15.3%;
• Dublin 14.9%;
• Galway city has a lower than average incidence of disability with 11.9%;

Education:

• For people with a disability aged 15 to 49, 16.3% had completed no higher than primary level education compared with 5.1% of the general population
• Secondary level education was the highest level completed by 22.3% compared with 15.1 per cent of non-disabled;

Employment:

• There were 162,681 persons with a disability in the labour force accounting for 30% – this compares to 61.9% for the overall population;
• Of people aged 15 and over with a disability 20.7% were at work, compared to 50.1% of the overall population aged 15 and over;

Type of Disability

• 1.1% of the population were blind or had a sight related disability;
• 2% were deaf or had a hearing related disability;
• 5.3% had a difficulty with basic physical activities;
• 1.3% have an intellectual disability;
• Within the figures for intellectual disability, the greatest incidence is amongst 10-14 year old males with almost 4,000 persons, (more than double that of females at 1,900) in this age group;
• A difficulty with learning, remembering or concentrating was experienced by 3% of the population;
• 2.1% had a psychological or emotional condition;
• 6%have a disability connected with pain, breathing or another chronic illness or condition;

Carers

• 187,112 persons or 4.1% of the total population were providing unpaid assistance to others in April 2011;
• Of these carers 114,113 (61%) were women and 72,999 (39%) men. It also showed that 4,228 children aged under 15 years were engaged in providing care to others, accounting for 2.3 per cent of all carers;