As part of the Census 2011 processing programme the place of work, school or college details were geo-coded. All workers resident in Ireland on Census night were coded to their place of work and all Irish resident students from the age of 5 and upwards were coded to their place of school/college. A detailed file containing the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of these residents along with information on the origin and destination of their journeys has been made available for analysis.

The POWSCAR is only available under strict conditions to bone fide researchers who are approved by CSO. The application process is as follows:

• Prospective users will have to apply in writing detailing their proposed research. The application form can be downloaded from the link below.
• Once an application is approved by CSO, the Research Authority is provided with a contract covering the use of the data. The contract must be signed by the CEO of the Research Authority and Director General of CSO. A template for the contract can be viewed at Appendix 4 to the USER Guide.
• All persons who are permitted to access the data must be signed up as Officers of Statistics for the duration of the research.
• CSO will provide the Research Authority with POWSCAR data for the duration of the research.
• If the duration of a proposed research project is for longer than one year, a contract may be signed for a maximum of one year after which it will be necessary for the Research Authority to re-apply.

All material published from the POWSCAR must be approved in advance by CSO.

For further details on the file content and applying for access to the data see the PDF document below:

• Place of Work, School or College - Census of Anonymised Records (POWSCAR) User Guide (PDF 1,023KB)  
• Research Microdata File (RMF) Application Procedure

AIRO Work Catchments Mapping tool

In collaboration with CSO, the All Island Research Observatory(AIRO) has developed a tool to map travel to work catchments for the 22 Gateways and Hubs defined in the National Spatial Strategy by Electoral Division(ED). Maps are based on the percentage of workers within each ED that work within the settlement boundary for each gateway and hub. The AIRO place of work catchments are based on the 2011 POWSCAR dataset but is available to the general public. Click here to view the map tool.