Leitrim has 28.5 physiotherapy locations per 100,000 residents. Sligo, the county next door, has 96.0. Both are rural counties in the north west of Ireland, with a 67.5-point gap in provider rate.
In the Republic of Ireland the national average is 69.1 physiotherapy locations per 100,000 people. Four counties sit far below it: Leitrim, Longford, Donegal and Offaly.
Cover varies widely between counties
Rare.Monitor tracked 3,506 distinct musculoskeletal (MSK) and physiotherapy provider locations across the ROI in August 2026. Against a Census 2022 population of 5,123,536, the 26 county rows give 69.1 locations per 100,000 people. The difference between the top and bottom counties varies between 100.2 and 28.5, showing a more than threefold difference across the country.
The national figure is weighted by population, and Dublin holds 28% of the country's residents. Dublin's own rate is 70.1, within a point of the national one, so the average largely describes Dublin and flatters everywhere thinner. Fifteen of the 26 counties fall below it.
Leitrim has the lowest provider rate on the map, while neighbouring Sligo sits among the highest.
Part of a wider pattern
Leitrim, Longford and Donegal, three of those four counties, also appear in the CSO's 2026 Measuring Distance to Services as the least accessible for HSE healthcare more broadly. Half of all households in Leitrim are more than 38 km from their nearest HSE General Hospital. All three also rank among the four counties with the longest median distances to emergency services. The pattern isn't specific to physiotherapy.
Some of it comes back to workforce. According to a survey of HSE physiotherapy managers cited by the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists, vacancy rates stood at around 40% nationally in 2025. In February 2024 the Dáil heard that the physiotherapy service at Manorhamilton hospital in north Leitrim had gone from five days a week to a physiotherapist attending two days. The ESRI has found that healthcare supply in the ROI is not allocated according to population need, and has not been since at least 2014. Where public provision falls short, private clinics tend to fill the gap, but private physiotherapy costs €60-80 for 30 minutes, and the counties with the fewest public clinics are not the ones where private clinics tend to open.
The same geography shapes dental access. Web presence among dental providers varies sharply by province
For the equivalent picture in England, where physiotherapy provision is read against NHS orthopaedic waiting times, see where England's physiotherapy supply is thinnest.
Methodology: provider counts are Rare.Monitor location records classified as musculoskeletal and matched to county by Local Electoral Area. County populations sum to 5,123,536 against the Census 2022 total of 5,149,139, a 0.5% shortfall from electoral divisions that did not map cleanly to county boundaries. Athlone's Local Electoral Area spans Westmeath and Roscommon; its 32 locations count in both, so the 26 county rows total 3,538. Source: Rare.Monitor, August 2026.
