Immigration to Ireland

The last census in Ireland was in  2011. The population figure was 4.5 Million  – which is an increase of 1 million
people in just 20 years. Ireland now has the highest fertility rate in  the European Union, with an average of 2.05 children per woman.

Immigration has also been an  important feature of Ireland’s demographic profile in recent years, with 17% of  the population born outside Ireland.
The largest immigrant communities in Ireland are  (in descending order) from Poland, the UK, Lithuania, Latvia Nigeria, Romania , India , Phillipines, Germany and USA

Figures for 2014 – allocation of PPS numbers by nationality
These are the top 10 nationalities applying for PPS numbers in 2014

United Kingdom 13,817
Poland  9,120
Romania  9,074
Brazil  7,771
Spain  5,195
Italy  4,265
France  3,739
United States of America  3,405
India  3,056
Germany  2,407

The number of Irish residents who were born outside Ireland  was 766,770 in 2011 (i.e. 17% of the population). This is an increase of 25% on the 2006 Census figure. This figure of 766,770 includes 241,985 Irish nationals born abroad, of whom 178,945 were born in the UK, 16,703 in US, 3,220 in Australia, 2,524 in Canada and 2,440 in South Africa.

In 2011 there were 544,357 (which is 12% of the population) non-Irish nationals from 199 different nations usually resident and present in Ireland . This was an increase of 29.7% since 2006. The increase is 143% between 2002 and 2011.

Polish nationals were the largest non-Irish nationality grouping – they showed a 93.7% increase from 63,276 persons in 2006 to 122,585 in 2011.

UK nationals (formerly the largest non-Irish national group) are now the second largest group with 112,259 living in Ireland in 2011.