Dec 14th, 2023: as explained here, we originally worked one-county-at-a-time.
If comparing a county only to itself this seemed reasonable. Because, over the years, the rate of duplicates within that county would be fairly consistent and so trends identified within it probably trustworthy.
But, as counties accumulated, interest grew in comparing one to another. Additionally, it became increasingly obvious that death notices repeated across counties (which our method would miss) would exaggerate the final national total.
So, in November 2023 we redid our work. This time we removed the duplicates at national level and then counted the notices in each county. This resulted in a drop in the number of notices within individual counties.
Despite this, the overall pattern of notices within each county remained more-or-less the same. Suggesting that, while it may have its limitations, the one-county-at-a-time approach is a valid way of looking at RIP.ie for signals of something going on.
If you want to see for yourself, and in the interest of transparency, here are our original 22 counties – completed before changes to the RIP.ie website prevented us doing Cork, Dublin, Kerry or Louth.
- Carlow
- Cavan
- Clare
- Donegal
- Galway
- Kildare
- Kilkenny
- Laois
- Leitrim
- Limerick
- Longford
- Mayo
- Meath
- Monaghan
- Offaly
- Roscommon
- Sligo
- Tipperary
- Waterford
- Westmeath
- Wexford
- Wicklow
For the latest figures across all 26 counties see Counties.