In an interesting and timely development, Teagasc has revealed a map of the country that highlights the level of isolation in rural areas, particularly in the west.
With the Government announcing measures stipulating that you should typically travel less than 2km from your home (unless you have good reason to do so), Teagasc has used this distance to determine how many houses are in the vicinity of each home in its Geographic Information System (GIS) map – for the month of March.
As you can see, these most isolated areas are to be to be found in Co. Donegal; west and north Connacht; south Co. Kerry; and north Co. Clare; with a few smaller patches dotted around the midlands and south Munster. The outlying red spot on the map is in Co. Wicklow, corresponding with the Wicklow Mountains.
Below is a JPEG image of Teagasc’s March map; simply click on the image to open up a larger version.
Alternatively, if you have a suitable viewer (application) on your PC, tablet or smart-phone, we also have a PDF version.
Click on this link or on the button below to open it (in which you will be able to zoom in and decipher all of the finer details). March map: Rural isolation – other houses within 2km of each home
Map colour-coding
The colour-coding on the map gets less dark the more densely populated an area is, until you get to the grey areas around the cities and bigger towns. The darkest shade of grey represents areas where there are 700 or more houses within 2km of each home.
Explaining the map, Teagasc said: “A 2km radius circle is quite a big area – 1,200ha – and within cities there are thousands of residences in this area. But in parts of rural Ireland the number of dwellings can get very small and the map highlights those areas where each household has fewer than 20 neighbours.
In a city or town, even when staying at home, there are neighbours next door; people walking past the window; someone to talk too over the garden fence. In remote areas, being at home means real isolation.
“These areas are remote, not only from neighbouring houses, but all kinds of services and, therefore, pose particular issues adhering to the new social distancing / cocooning rules,” Teagasc highlighted.