Context : A member of the Local Group , IC 1613 is a gas rich irregular dwarf galaxy that appears to have formed stars continuously over the last 10 Gyr and is relatively independent of external influences from other galaxies .

Aims : This paper aims to study the spatial distribution of the asymptotic giant branch ( AGB ) population in IC 1613 and its metallicity .

Methods : Using WFCAM on UKIRT , high quality JHK photometry of an area of 0.8 deg ^ { 2 } centered on IC 1613 was obtained .
The data have been used to isolate the C- and M-type components of the AGB population and using their number ratio , C/M , a global mean metallicity has been derived .
The metallicity and the TRGB magnitude have been studied as a function of distance from the galactic centre and as a function of azimuthal angle .

Results : The tip of the RGB ( TRGB ) has been found at K _ { 0 } = 18.25 \pm 0.15 mag .
The colour separation between the C- and M-type components of the AGB population has been located at ( J - K ) = 1.15 \pm 0.05 mag , giving a global C/M ratio of 0.52 \pm 0.04 and from this an iron abundance of [ Fe/H ] = -1.26 \pm 0.07 dex has been calculated .

Conclusions : The AGB population has been detected out to a radial distance of 4.5 kpc in the de-projected plane of the galaxy .
The measured TRGB is consistent with previous measurements and no significant variation is detected in the TRGB or in metallicity either with galactocentric distance or azimuthal angle .