EDITORIAL: Do not underestimate your importance in shaping Tipperary

Profile eight was the final Census 2022 release for this year. This week, we looked at who is speaking Irish and who is not, as well as education levels.

Over the past few months, it has been wonderful to see this data broken down by not only county, towns and sometimes villages.

People are not numbers, but every figure in those releases was contributed by you and me so that our county and country can become better.

Filling in the census may seem like a hassle. But because you did, we know that more than 66,000 people in the Premier County can speak Irish to some degree.

We can see that people are staying in education longer.

We know that we really need to be able to take the bus to work and that women still stay home more often than men.

We can see that many people in Tipperary are living with disabilities, so the funding of health organisations, NGOs and community groups has never been more important. Our growing elderly population does and will continue to need support.

From the data we can see that many people from a variety of countries and ethnicities call Tipperary home.

And we can see how work in Tipperary and Ireland is changing and that people, in fact, do want to work.

As we come into 2024, hopes are high for development in the county. New local area plans are being processed.

Grants are being applied for, and the battle is on to secure commitments for infrastructure under a review of the National Development Plan.

As the county grows and looks to new industries like bio-energy, Census data becomes more important.

Not only that, but as technology advances the need for reliable and accessible information is crucial. The whole world is fighting little information wars all of the time.

In Ireland we have seen how quickly small amounts of people with big feelings and a small bit of information can cause havoc.

But you reader, have access to a huge amount of information at your fingertips.

And it is because of an open, collaborative and transparent system of information, maintained in no small amount by the Central Statistics Office, you can see what is fact and what is fiction.

And if you are going through those sets and you just don’t understand it, no judgement at all.

We are here to explain.