That’s Ireland

See last week’s posts, Ten Best Places in Ireland to Find a Woman or to Find a Man. And thanks to the Sunday Tribune, RTE, Q102, Phantom FM and Blogorrah for helping to promote these peculiar nuggets of Irish demography.

But why are so many of the unattached women living in South Dublin? Are they too engrossed in Friends, Desperate Housewives and Big Brother to notice a man unless he owns a yacht and knows three hundred and forty six names for coffee? Perhaps, but here’s another theory. >>>

Moving

Firstly, not all the women in South Dublin were born there. Roughly half of all babies born everywhere are boys, yet there are more women in South Dublin and more men in rural areas. So either country women are moving to Dublin, or South Dublin men are moving down to Longford and Cavan. And I think we know which is more likely.

Unattractive

My friend Paul Woodfull has a theory as to why the get-up-and-go women are more likely to be single. He reckons that men are not attracted to successful women. Unsuccessful men are intimidated by them, and successful men just want a trophy girlfriend to hang on their arm.

Men

Meanwhile, there seems to be one good reason why some areas have more unattached men. Six of the top ten places to find an unattached man are rural areas in Longford, Cavan, Clare, Mayo and Carlow. The other four are Castelrea, North Inner City Dublin and Portlaoise—all of which have prisons—and Templemore, which has loads of Gardai.

Romantic

I must concede that basing your social life on census statistics is not the most romantic way of finding a date, although there is an outside chance that you might hook up with David McWilliams or Garret Fitzgerald. I’m not sure which is the best chat-up line: I came here to see you because I worked out the figures from the census, or I came here to see you because I saw it on the internet.