Ratoath () is a commuter town in County Meath, Ireland. A branch of the Broad Meadow Water (Broadmeadow River) () flows through the town. The R125 and R155 roads meet in the village. At the 2016 census, there were 9,533 people living in Ratoath. The town is around northwest of Dublin city centre. Name Ratoath gives its name to a village, a townland, a parish, an electoral division and to a barony. The derivation or meaning of the word is uncertain. Two alternative Irish forms are cited: Ráth-Tógh and Ráth-Tábhachta. These place names occur in Irish manuscripts and scholars say that the writers were referring to Ratoath; it seems that they were trying to give a phonetic rendering of a name that was unfamiliar to them. Mruigtuaithe occurs in the Book of Armagh as the name of one of these places in Meath where Saint Patrick founded a church and Eoin MacNeill identifies it as Ratoath. If this is correct it would seem that the second portion of the word comes from the Irish word tuath which means a territory belonging to a family or sept. Mruig means a grazing plain. Ráth is the Irish for a ringfort. In a royal grant of the manor of Ratoath to Sir Robert Bold, later Baron Ratoath, in 1468, it was described as Rathonth. On the other hand, a statute of the Parliament of Ireland of 1450, permitting Richard of York, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to hold a market there, calls it Ratoath. Population and demographics In the 20 years between the 1996 and 2016 census, the population of Ratoath increased nearly 10-fold, from 1,061 in 1996 to 9,533 by 2016. According to the 2016 census report, 87% of the town's houses (2,437 of 2,790 households) were constructed between 1991 and 2010. Ratoath is a commuter town with most of its adult population commuting to Dublin to work. More than three-quarters of the population travel to work by car. In 2011, 10.9% of the workforce was unemployed compared to the national average of 19%. As of 2011, social class A, employers and managers constituted 717 of the 2,751 households. In April 2011 Ratoath had a population of 9,043, consisting of 4,520 males and 4,523 females. The population of pre-school age (0–4) was 1,158, of primary school age (5–12) was 1,582 and of secondary school age (13–18) was 724. There were 313 persons