One fifth of Irish households have no internet access at home

Nearly one fifth of Irish households have no access to the internet at home, new figures from the Central Statistics Office show.

The CSO Information Society statistics show 82 per cent of households have internet access, up from 63 per cent in 2008. The main reasons stated for not having a household internet connection was “not needed” (42 per cent) and “lack of skills” (39 per cent).

Emailing was the most popular activity carried out on the internet by individuals, according to the statistics, followed by social networking and online banking.

Of the 16-29 age category, 89 per cent of individuals access the internet for social networking purposes compared with just 25 per cent of the 60-74 age category.

According to the data, the most popular types of goods or services being purchased by internet users were associated with travel and entertainment.

The CSO study shows more than three quarters of the population (80 per cent) have used the internet in the past three months while 86 per cent of people aged 16-29 now use the internet every day.

In Dublin, 74 per cent accessed the internet every day, compared to 55 per cent of individuals in the Border region.

The data for 2014 also indicates that 35 per cent of internet users use storage space in the cloud to save files.