The changing distribution of population in Kerry and West Cork

Abstract

Many of the picturesque areas in the peninsulas known to tourists have lost forty per cent or more of their 1891 population. The loss is so striking that a very small area would remain as a Congested District if re-assessed today on the same basis as in 1891. In Donegal, approximately half the area congested in 1891 is still congested to-day. In this paper the whole of Kerry is considered, with the four rural districts of West Cork (Bantry, Castletown, Skibbereen and Skull), which were taken over by the Congested Districts Board in 1909, when the scope of their work was extended to include part of the richer hinterland of the poverty-stricken western regions. Geographically, there is no line of separation between West Cork and Kerry and the whole region gives a compact area forming the extreme south-west of Ireland south of the Shannon.