Oranmore – as made famous in the song “The Galway Shawl” came fifth in our league table of the BEST towns in Ireland to live.
Our top 20 chart was based on census figures from 2006 and was compiled using statistics on Education, Housing, Lone Parents, IT, Unemployment to analyse all the towns. Only towns with populations over 1500 were included. This is not intended as a tourist guide – just an indication of the best towns to live in.
At the 2006 census – the population of Oranmore was just 3513 .
Many of the residents probably work in Galway City and the  unemployment rate in Oranmore was only 4.56% – which is below  the national average in Ireland of 5.89%
In Oranmore – only 1.51% of the workforce are unable to work because of disability or ill health – which is well below the Irish census average of 4.71% .

Most workers in Oranmore are are employed in technical or professional jobs (24% of the workforce)
Lone parents- make up 12.22% of households in Oranmore – this is two thirds of the national average which is 19.29%.

Housing: Local Authority rented homes make up just 1.3% of the dwelling units in Oranmore. This is about an eighth of the average for Irish towns of 9.06.
Rented homes in Oranmore make up 30% of all homes in the town – which is just over the national average of 28.1%.
Of the homes in Oranmore – 14.5% are owned outright – with no mortgage outstanding – This is half the average for Ireland as a whole which is 28%. This is due to the mostly new homes and yoiunger occupants. In Oranmore the population ages 24 to 44 makes up 48.73% of the population – this is well above the Irish population as a whole which is 34% in that age group.
Central Heating is not installed in 6.64% of dwellings in Oranmore – which is a lot better than the national average of 10.2%.

Information Technology. : 63.18% of households own personal computers in Oranmore – compared to 53.3% nationally. Broadband connections were at 27.8% in Oranmore in 2006 . This is about 30% over the national avearge which was a poor 20.18% .  41% of homes had no internet access at all in Oranmore – compared to the national average of 51%

Education : Education levels of Oranmore residents is the best in Ireland . This doesn’t mean the schools are the best – just that people who live here or moved here for work have a good education . In Oranmore just 4.64% of the people were only educated to primary school level or had no formal education at all. This is way below he national average of 16.72%.  People with a third level degree or a higher qualification – make up 38.35% of the Oranmore workforce – which is the highest in any Irish town. and over double the national average of 16.57%.
Community involvement in Oranmore is about the same as the average for the country – 15.9% of the over 15s said they carried out some sort of voluntary work.

The percentage of people with a disability in Oranmore is below the national average of 9.8% at 5%.

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