Irish urbanites 'more likely to get divorced'

A new study has suggested that Irish people living in cities are far more likely to get divorced than those who dwell in the countryside.

The report - entitled The Fragmented Family - used census data to build up a picture of marriage in Ireland.

It found that marriage breakdown has increase fivefold in the country in the last 20 years.

What's more, it showed that marriages were more likely to hit the rocks for city dwellers. While the overall divorce rate in the country is around 13 per cent, the rates in urban areas like Dublin, Limerick and Cork were between 15 and 20 per cent.

"Although the national breakdown rate is 13 per cent, this is not evenly distributed and affects cities and socially deprived areas in particular, much more heavily than the norm," explained Professor Patricia Casey, a consultant psychiatrist at Dublin's Mater Hospital.

"Limerick city, for example, has large pockets of social deprivation, and this is probably the main reason its rate of marriage breakdown is so far above the national average."

Figures recently released by the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that divorce rates in the country dropped by seven per cent in 2006.