Demographics

The census of 2006 reported 22,435 Irish Travellers living in Ireland. Of them, 20,975 were in Urban areas and 1,460 were living in Rural areas. In Tuam, Travellers constituted 7.71% of the total population. But overall the figure for Ireland was 0.5%. 9,301 Travellers were there in the 0-14 age range comprising 41.5% of all the Travellers. A further 3,406 of them were in the 15-24 age range comprising 15.2%. Children of age range 0-17 comprised 48.7% of the Traveller population. The birth rate of Irish Travellers has decreased since the 1990s, but they still have one of the highest birth rates in Europe. The birth rate for the Traveller community for the year 2005 was 33.32 per 1000, possibly the highest birth rate recorded for any community in Europe. (For comparison, the Irish National Average was 15.0 in 2007.) [1]
Members of the Traveller community are 10 times more likely to die in road accidents. This, at 22 per cent, represented the most common cause of death among Traveller males. Infants are 10 times more likely to die before reaching the age of two, while a third of Travellers die before the age of 25. In addition, 80 per cent of travellers die before the age of 65. Some 10 per cent of Traveller children die before their second birthday, compared to just 1 per cent of the general population. In Ireland, 2.6 per cent of all deaths in the total population were for people aged under 25 versus 32 per cent for the Travellers. [2] [3]
In addition to Ireland, Travellers live in other parts of the world. There are 15,000 in the UK. A further 7,000 live in the USA.