Non-Irish in Ireland reaches over 544,000

Newly released Irish census figures show the number of non-Irish nationals living in the Republic has reached over 544,000, a 143 percent increase from 2002. Such foreign-born residents now account for about 12 percent of Ireland’s population.

Here are links to news stories in Irish Central and the Irish Times.

Polish nationals have the largest presence in Ireland, more than 122,500 people, compared to 112,000 from the U.K. The number of U.S. citizens living in Ireland has declined by nearly 12 percent since 2006 to about 11,000.

Here’s a link to all the data from the Central Statistics Office in Ireland.

I reported and wrote about this population diversity trend during my March 2009 trip to Ireland. Here’s the story I wrote for the Sunday Perspective’s section of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.