Gardai and Devon's family are very concerned for her wellbeing
Search
27 Sept 2025
Search
27 Sept 2025
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.
Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.
If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .
Support our mission and join our community now.
To continue reading this article, you can subscribe for as little as €0.50 per week which will also give you access to all of our premium content and archived articles!
Alternatively, you can pay €0.50 per article, capped at €1 per day.
Thank you for supporting Ireland's best local journalism!
Glenties had lowest national birth rate in 2022
Latest Central Statistics Office (CSO) data shows that Glenties had the lowest birth rate in Ireland in 2022, which was described as “a worry for the population” by a Glenties-based Donegal County Councillor.
Within Donegal, only Letterkenny had a birth rate higher than the national average of 10.7 births per 1,000 of the population. Glenties, Milford, Carndonagh, Buncrana, Donegal Town, and Lifford-Stranorlar were local electoral areas that all totalled below average.
In 2022, the birth rate in Glenties was 7.4 births per 1,000 of the population, down from 8.6 births per 1,000 of the population in 2021.
The low birth rate in Glenties coincides with the town having the ninth highest death rate in the country for 2022, with a death rate of 9.7 per 1,000 of the population. The national average was 6.7 per 1,000 of the population.
Other local electoral areas to have under eight births per 1,000 of population in 2022 included Killiney-Shankill in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Galway City Central, and Graiguecullen-Portarlington in Laois.
READ NEXT: Planning sought for new Donegal Town family resource centre
At the opposite end of the table, Letterkenny had the joint ninth-highest birth rate in the country, with 12.2 births per 1,000 of population. Tallaght South had the highest birth rate, with 13.7 births per 1,000 of population, followed by Enniscorthy in Wexford and Ongar in Fingal.
Glenties-based Donegal County Councillor, Cllr Brian Carr, told Donegal Live: “That is a worry for the population, for the future of schools, and the rural community, which is a big community.
“At the moment, the numbers in the schools have been rising over the last number of years, so I can not see the impact of it visually at the moment.
“Our schools in the rural area, the school numbers are declining, but in the towns of Glenties and other towns, the numbers are going up.”
Out of the other Donegal local electoral areas, only Donegal Town didn’t see a decline in birth rate from 2021 to 2022, with a rate of 10 births per 1,000 of the population.
Lifford-Stranorlar saw a birth rate of 9.7 per 1,000 of the population, followed by Carndonagh (9.6), Buncrana (8.8), and Milford (8.7).
Subscribe or register today to discover more from DonegalLive.ie
Buy the e-paper of the Donegal Democrat, Donegal People's Press, Donegal Post and Inish Times here for instant access to Donegal's premier news titles.
Keep up with the latest news from Donegal with our daily newsletter featuring the most important stories of the day delivered to your inbox every evening at 5pm.
This publication supports the work of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman, and our staff operate within the Code of Practice of the Press Council. You can obtain a copy of the Code, or contact the Council, at www.presscouncil.ie, Lo-call 1800 208 080 or email: info@presscouncil.ie.
