The Central Statistics Office (CSO) released preliminary results from the April census last week and more will be available over the next year or two. The broadcaster Sean MacReamoinn, who passed away in 2007, was asked in his later years how he was feeling and replied: “I feel like a census form: broken down by age, sex and religion.”

The early results do not give details on these items, but they are fascinating nonetheless – particularly as to the geographical pattern of settlement. In all but three counties in the northwest, the population continued to rise in the last five years, despite some net migration nationally.

Ireland has been urbanising steadily for generations and the census returns confirm that the trend is continuing. There has been rapid growth in the major cities and their catchment areas, especially in the east of the country. Even in those counties where population fell, there was an expansion in the population of the major towns. Urban populations tend to be younger and to have more births and fewer deaths. Contrary to popular belief, actual migration from rural to urban areas is less of a factor.

Overall, the population rose by 170,000 but the housing stock by only 19,000. The collapse in residential construction saw a decline in vacant homes across the country, but they are unevenly distributed.

The CSO director general Padraig Dalton presented the above map during his address to the MacGill Summer School in Glenties on Tuesday.

It is very clear that the extraordinary bubble in house-building in the years up to 2008 occurred in the wrong places and there is now a big overhang of unused housing stock in most rural areas outside Leinster. Meanwhile, the number of residential units in the Dublin city council area actually fell over the five-year period.

Along the western seaboard and in the north midlands, the vacancy rate exceeds 25% in many districts, while it is below 10% in Leinster and most of Munster. This imbalance is reflected in house prices, which are perfectly affordable in many areas and prohibitive in Dublin and some of the provincial cities.

There is a tendency to analyse the urbanisation trend in Ireland as if it were a special Irish phenomenon and amenable to some kind of solution. It has been going on since the 19th century everywhere in Europe and it is time to accept that it is going to continue.

The policies which incentivised the excess construction of houses in areas with no demand have thankfully been abandoned, but it should now be clear that this was an attempt to make water flow uphill.

Net outward migration, which peaked in the years immediately following the banking bust, has subsided and should be a minor factor in the years ahead. Since births exceed deaths, this makes it plausible that population growth will continue in the years ahead. It needs to be reflected in a more rational housing policy.

In most provincial areas there is adequate housing stock, and local authorities should be able to increase the availability of social housing through purchasing existing units. But in the Dublin area and some other cities, there is a clear requirement for extensive new construction in public and private sectors.

This will require a more proactive planning policy, rather than gimmicky handouts to prospective purchasers. In the last few years, there has been virtually no new construction in the areas with the highest house prices and the fewest unoccupied dwellings – the reverse of what would happen in a normal market.

Government measures that encourage demand rather than supply will push up prices and make matters worse.

The major cities, especially Dublin, are islands in an ocean of accessible land zoned for agriculture and other non-residential uses. There has, as yet, been no coherent response to this self-inflicted policy failure.