1.34 Million People in Ireland Live More Than 30 Minutes From a Padel Court

Ireland now has 193 padel courts in the Republic and 110 more in Northern Ireland, and the number goes up most months. But a court in Terenure does nothing for someone in Tullamore. So instead of counting courts, we counted people — every resident of every Small Area in the 2022 Census — and measured how far each of them is from the nearest court they could actually book tonight.

The headline

3.8 million people — 74% of the Republic — live within an estimated 30-minute drive of an open padel court. The other 1.34 million, 26%, do not. Roughly 650,000 are more than 45 minutes away.

The distribution is lopsided in a way the national number hides. Nearly half the country — mostly Dublin — is within ten minutes of a court. A quarter can't reach one in thirty.

Being near a court isn't the same as being near a court you can get onto. Measured against venues with at least four courts — the ones where a Thursday 7pm slot is realistic — only 52% of the population is within 30 minutes.

Six counties where most people can't reach padel

That's 565,000 people in six counties with less than 30% coverage. Tipperary is the biggest: three in four residents are beyond half an hour, served by a single two-court outdoor venue in Borrisoleigh. Sligo town, the largest urban centre in the north-west, is 46 km from the nearest court.

At the other end, Dublin is 100% covered at 30 minutes and 94% at 10. Louth is 95%, Kildare, Kilkenny and Wicklow 91%. Cork — 64% — has the largest absolute number of people outside the band anywhere except Tipperary: 209,000, mostly in West and North Cork.

Full county table at the end of this article.

The biggest towns with no padel in reach

Eighty-two of Ireland's 220 towns over 1,500 people are outside the 30-minute band. Navan — the largest town in the country with no court within reach — tops the list. Which brings us to the good news.

The pipeline fixes most of this. One venue fixes the most.

We re-ran the model with every tracked pipeline venue added: 24 announced as coming soon, 13 with planning permission, 3 with applications lodged. (Ten unverified entries are excluded.)

National coverage rises from 74% to 85%. The number of people beyond 30 minutes falls from 1.34 million to 789,000.

And one project does more than any other. Indoor Padel Ireland's six-court venue in Navan brings 95,000 people inside 30 minutes who aren't today — more than the next two projects combined. Meath jumps from 50% coverage to 94%.

Some of the most valuable sites in the country are the smallest. A two-court school installation in Cahir is worth 59,000 people because there is nothing else in South Tipperary. A single court at a national school in Firies would bring Killarney inside the band.

County by county, the pipeline transforms the north-west: Leitrim goes from 2% to 77%, Sligo from 7% to 78%, Tipperary from 27% to 78%, Mayo from 24% to 74%.

Five counties the pipeline leaves behind

Offaly stays at 22%. Nothing tracked is coming. Tullamore — 15,600 people, 31 km from the nearest court — is now the largest town in Ireland with no padel in reach and no padel planned. Donegal (56%), Cavan (60%), Monaghan (66%) and Westmeath (77%) don't move either: no pipeline, or none we can verify.

Where the next venue would serve the most people

We ranked every town over 3,000 people currently beyond 20 minutes from a court by how many people a venue there would newly bring inside 20 minutes.

Navan wins again (65,000) — and it's in hand. After that comes a cluster of commuter towns in north Meath and north Fingal: Stamullen, Dunshaughlin, Trim, Balbriggan, Ratoath, Ashbourne and Skerries each score 46,000–57,000, though they overlap heavily and Balbriggan has two Padel 100 sites coming. Then the midlands: Monasterevin (45,000), Mountmellick (40,000), Kildare town (39,000), Clara and Tullamore (35,000–37,000), Portarlington (36,000), Mullingar (35,000). Then Sligo (41,000), Clonmel (32,000), Enniscorthy, Killarney and Mallow (30,000–31,000 each).

This is a population-coverage model, nothing more. It knows nothing about sites, planning, rents or who else is looking at the same town. It is not advice on where to build. It is a map of where people are and courts aren't.

What this means

Ireland's padel boom has been a Dublin, Limerick and Belfast story, and the numbers show why: nearly half the country is within ten minutes of a court, and almost all of it is in those places. The next phase is different. The projects that move the national access figure most are not the big city venues — they're a six-court hall in Navan, ten courts in Sligo, two courts at a school in Cahir. The pipeline, if it opens, takes Ireland from three in four to more than five in six. What it doesn't do is reach the midlands, the north-east or Donegal. That's where the map is still empty.

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County table (open venues only)

Galway's 0% in the last column is real: its three venues have 3, 3 and 2 courts.

Methodology

Population. CSO Census 2022 Small Area Population Statistics, all 18,919 Small Areas (average ≈270 people), total 5,149,139. Small Area centroids from the CSO/Tailte Éireann 2022 boundaries.

Venues. The 87 open venues on the Openplay Irish Padel Court Tracker, island-wide. Northern Ireland venues are included as destinations — Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan and Louth residents use them — but Northern Ireland residents are not in the population base.

Travel time is estimated, not routed. Drive time = straight-line distance × 1.3 (a standard road-circuity factor) ÷ 50 km/h. The bands therefore correspond to straight-line radii of 6.4, 12.8, 19.2 and 28.8 km. This flatters cities slightly and understates rural coverage slightly. Read every figure as "estimated drive-time equivalent."

Sensitivity. At 40 km/h, 1.70 million (33%) are beyond 30 minutes; at 60 km/h, 1.03 million (20%). With a circuity factor of 1.4, 1.47 million (28.5%). The rank order of counties and the top pipeline site are unchanged under every assumption tested.

Towns. CSO Urban Areas 2022 with 1,500+ residents; distance is the population-weighted average across the town's Small Areas.

Pipeline. Coming Soon, Permission Granted and Application Lodged entries on the tracker; ten unverified entries excluded. Per-venue gains are each venue on its own against today's open set, so overlapping venues (the two Sligo sites) don't add together.

Capacity. No Irish operator publishes utilisation, so the "4+ courts" column is a proxy for bookability, kept separate from the basic access figure.

Source: Openplay Padel Access Model, August 2026, built on CSO Census 2022 Small Area Population Statistics and the Openplay Irish Padel Court Tracker. Free to cite with attribution and a link to this page. The Small Area dataset is available on request. Next update: November 2026.