EVERY WEEK, TheJournal.ie offers a selection of statistics and numerical nuggets to help you digest the week that has just passed.
€1,000 – The amount each Irish person is likely to spend, on average, while on holiday this year. KBC’s figures show men will spend around €1,158, while women will spend €8,58.
€116 - The fine that Sweden’s Princess Madeleine – who got married earlier today – will face for driving in a bus lane in Stockholm. The princess ignited public debate when she claimed royal immunity to get off the fine – but it later emerged that only her father, King Carl Gustav, enjoys immunity from prosecution.
€19.95 – The amount that Irish people might pay a British website in order to get a European Health Insurance Card – which is actually available for free. The site charges the fee to process applications online, while the HSE processes most applications in paper.
116,845 - The number of candidates sitting Leaving and Junior Certificate exams this month. Good luck to them all.
4,560 - The approximate number of trees that need to be cut down (or the equivalent, if the paper is recycled) to produce sufficient answer paper for the Leaving and Junior Cert exams. The average paper-producing tree makes around 8,333 pages; it’s estimated that exam candidates will write a total of 38 million A4 pages of answers.
10,470 – The number of mandatory breath tests Gardaí say they carried out over the bank holiday weekend, an increase of 37 per cent on last year.
79,771,164 – The number of passengers carried by Ryanair in the twelve months to the end of May. That’s a record for the airline, which could breach the 80 million passengers mark this month.
421,737 – The number of people on the Live Register last month.
2.3 million – The approximate number of people in Ireland for whom social welfare payments were made in 2012. That’s roughly half of the entire population of Ireland.
21,700 – The approximate number of houses which had their gas or electricity supplies disconnected last year for non-payment, according to figures published this week by the Commission for Energy Regulation.
294 - The approximate number of people in Ireland who are thought to have died from heatwaves in the last 30 years. A DIT study shows heatwaves have led to increased illness, hospitalisations and deaths – and warned that with the climate changing as it is, deaths from heatwaves are likely to increase in the future.
One in seven – The proportion of all US intelligence reports which cite data scraped from one of nine major technology companies. It emerged this week that companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo have a ‘back door’ through which the US security authorities can scrape records relating to US citizens.
62 – The number of All-Ireland Hurling Championship matches played by Kilkenny since June 1999, when Brian Cody took over as the Cats’ manager. Henry Shefflin has started every single one of those games – but his unbroken run will end tomorrow, when an injured Shefflin will be on the sidelines as Kilkenny face Offaly.
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