14 months have past since the last update to “How Full is Ireland?” series of substack blog posts attempting to use mobile phone network subscriptions as a means to grab a snapshot of the actual population figure that is more up to date, or census by smartphone.
In a way this oversight has been good because since the last time a year of data was recorded and published by Comreg, but in the grader scheme of things it does not bode well.
A lot happened on the way to 2023
The latest Comreg data brings us right up to Q4 2023 – this is as recent you will get, Q1 2024 data is not expected to be published until June 6th of this year.
There has been a net change of +154,144 active mobile subscriptions since update 1
Is that equivalent to population increase?
Well maybe or kinda or maybe not.
For the purposes of these updates on the original question at the root of this ongoing line of inquiry has always required the assumption, that the mobile network subscriptions are a decent source to serve as a periodic rolling headcount of actual people walking around the Republic of Ireland, and so then cab be reasonably compared to annual CSO population estimates (red).
Bottom line – Q4 2023 CSO pop. est. of 5,281,612 vs 5,730,873 Q4 2023 mobile subscriptions implies that the CSO population estimates are no longer reliable (since at east mid 2021) – there could be nearly half a million, or 449,261 more people in Ireland than the CSO thinks there are.
The represents close to a 10% error rate in the CSO population estimates versus active network subscriptions as a proxy for actual population over the last 3 years, while also implying there is a massive surge of people entering the Republic of Ireland that is till ongoing.
Recent good weather sees record numbers
However we know these numbers are not spot on and it is really an exercise to see trends in the numbers reflecting and thus validating what we can see with our eyes.
The appearance of this incredible video taken on a smartphone, reminded me I had not re-visited the Comreg mobile data in some time – When I did it was as shocking to me as the Powerscourt Waterfall video has been shocking to many, but can we claim surprise when the data implies a massive population surge is underway for years?
Not really.
Sources: Comreg Quarterly Reports, CSO Population estimates