nisrarr is a package for accessing data from the NISRA data portal directly from R.
Installation
Install nisrarr from CRAN with:
install.packages("nisrarr")Alternatively, you can install the development version of nisrarr from GitHub with:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("MarkPaulin/nisrarr")Example
nisra_search() lets you search for a dataset using keywords or variable names, and shows information like the last time the dataset was updated:
library(nisrarr)
head(nisra_search(keyword = "claimant"))
#> # A tibble: 3 × 5
#> dataset_code dataset_label frequency dataset_dimensions updated
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <list> <dttm>
#> 1 CCMLGD Claimant Count … Month <chr [3]> 2025-06-10 10:18:23
#> 2 CCMAA Claimant Count … Month <chr [3]> 2025-06-10 10:17:45
#> 3 CCMSOA Claimant Count … Month <chr [3]> 2025-06-10 10:16:16nisra_read_dataset() can be used to download a dataset from the NISRA data portal as a data-frame:
claimant_count <- nisra_read_dataset("CCMLGD")
head(claimant_count)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 4
#> Statistic Month `Local Government District` value
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl>
#> 1 Claimant Count 2005M01 Northern Ireland 29573
#> 2 Claimant Count 2005M01 Antrim and Newtownabbey 1530
#> 3 Claimant Count 2005M01 Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon 2165
#> 4 Claimant Count 2005M01 Belfast 7948
#> 5 Claimant Count 2005M01 Causeway Coast and Glens 2763
#> 6 Claimant Count 2005M01 Derry City and Strabane 4674
#> # Source: Claimant Count Monthly DataThe data portal also provides various types of metadata, which can be accessed using get_metadata() or get_metadata_field():
get_metadata(claimant_count)
#> Label: Claimant Count Monthly Data
#> Subject: Claimant Count
#> Type: Official statistics
#> Updated: 2025-06-10T10:18:23.357Z
#> Note: The claimant count is an administrative data source derived from Jobs and Benefits Offices ...
#> Contact: Economic and Labour Market Statistics
#> Contact email: economicstats@nisra.gov.uk
#> Contact phone: +44 (0)28 90529475
#> Copyright: Crown Copyright (https://www.nisra.gov.uk/crown-copyright)
get_metadata_field(claimant_count, "contact")
#> $name
#> [1] "Economic and Labour Market Statistics"
#>
#> $email
#> [1] "economicstats@nisra.gov.uk"
#>
#> $phone
#> [1] "+44 (0)28 90529475"You can also access boundaries from the data portal. This isn’t available for all datasets, so your mileage may vary:
library(dplyr)
#> Warning: package 'dplyr' was built under R version 4.4.1
#>
#> Attaching package: 'dplyr'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
#>
#> filter, lag
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#>
#> intersect, setdiff, setequal, union
library(ggplot2)
#> Warning: package 'ggplot2' was built under R version 4.4.3
claimant_count |>
nisra_get_boundaries() |>
filter(Statistic == "Percentage Claimant Count", Month == max(Month)) |>
ggplot(aes(fill = value)) +
geom_sf() +
scale_fill_binned(
type = "viridis",
n.breaks = 6,
name = "Percentage Claimant Count",
labels = scales::label_percent(scale = 1)
)