Detailed analysis of Health, Disability and Carers in Ireland

The CSO has just published the latest profile of the Census 2011 results “Profile 8 Our bill of Health – Health, Disability and Carers in Ireland”.  The publication presents a profile of the health of the Irish population, focusing in detail on disability and carers who provide unpaid assistance.  Social Justice Ireland welcomes this report and the evidence and analysis that it provides.  This evidence and analysis should be used to inform and underpin public policy in the areas of health, disability and carers.

The report looks in detail at the number of people with a disability from the point of view of family status, living arrangements, education, work and the different types of disabilities that affect people.  It analyses the general health of the population looking in detail at issues such as social class, disability and marital status.  The report also profiles carers in Ireland and includes for the first time new results on children who act as carers.

Some main findings:

• A total of 595,335 persons, 13.0 per cent of the population had a disability in April 2011.
• 56,087 disabled people aged 65 and over lived alone.
• 16.3 per cent of disabled persons aged 15-49 had completed no higher than primary education.
• Persons with a disability had a labour force participation rate of 30 per cent.
• People living in the suburbs of the five major cities had the best overall health, report 92.1 per cent of the population having good or very good health compared with only 88.4 per cent in cities.
• 187,112 people, 4.1 per cent of the total population were providing unpaid care assistance to others in April 2011.
• 61 per cent of these carers are women, 39 per cent are men.
• Carers provided 6,287,510 hours of care each week, an average of 33.6 hours of unpaid help and assistance each.
• 4,288 children under the age of 15 were engaged in providing care to others, accounting for 2.3 per cent of all carers.
• Children aged 9 and under provided a total of 13,738 hours of care each week, while children aged 10-14 provided 24,758 hours of care each week.