Neither the prophets of doom of the anti-divorce lobby, nor the pro-divorce campaigners who battled on behalf of 80,000 people supposedly in need of divorce have been proved right - there has been no rush to Ireland's newly-opened divorce courts. A year after the introduction of divorce in Ireland, which eventually became legal last February 24th, fewer than 1,700 people have applied for this total legal dissolution of their marriages.

Up to the end of the year a total of 1,360 applications had been made for a divorce in the circuit courts, of which 356 were granted. Twenty-three were sought in the High Court, and seven granted. None was refused. However, the volume of applications is increasing. In the first four months of operation of the divorce law there were 244 applications, an average of 61 a month. In the last six months of the year there were 1,116 applications, an average of almost 200 a month. If this has continued for the first six weeks of this year, it adds about 300 more to the figure, bringing a total of something under 1,700 applications to date.

Predictably, the highest number of applications were made in Dublin, which with 618 accounts for almost half the total. It is followed by Cork with 149. Galway had more divorce applications than Limerick (68 as against 45), and the lowest figure is for Carrick-on-Shannon, serving the most sparsely populated county, Leitrim. Only four people have sought divorces there, followed by eight in Roscommon.