Galway Male

A harbour city on Ireland’s west coast, sits where the River Corrib meets the Atlantic. The city’s hub is 18th-century Eyre Square, a popular meeting spot surrounded by shops, and traditional pubs that often offer live Irish folk music. Nearby, stone-clad cafes, boutiques and art galleries line the winding lanes of the Latin Quarter, which retains portions of the medieval city walls.

The constituency of East Galway was created for the 1937 general election, under the Electoral (Revision of Constituencies) Act 1935, when the former Galway constituency was split into Galway East and Galway West. It was abolished in 1948 and recreated in 1961. It was abolished again in 1969 and recreated in its current form in 1977. It spans the entire area of the eastern half of County Galway, taking in the towns of Ballinasloe, Tuam, Portumna and Loughrea.

Galway has a permanent Irish language theatre located in the city centre, Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe (1928), which has produced some of Ireland’s most celebrated actors. The Druid Theatre Company has won international acclaim for its cutting edge production and direction.

Approximately 78% of the population of Galway is white Irish, descended from native Gaelic peoples and Norman settlers. A further 5% are foreign-born Irish. Following an influx of immigrants to Galway during the 2000s, approximately 17% of the population is non-Irish. Slightly more than half of this group are white Europeans, coming from Poland and other Central European and Baltic States, such as Latvia and Lithuania. Smaller numbers of Asian and African immigrants come from East Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. In the 2006 Census, 15.4% of the population were aged 0–14, 76.1% were aged 15–64, and 8.5% were aged over 65. 51.9% of the population were female and 48.1% were male

(Wikipedia 2015)