Post by earl on Jul 1, 2008 16:50:30 GMT
FROM mono-cultural to multi-cultural in just four short years.
There are 195 independent states in the world, and people from 188 of them were living in Ireland at the time of the last census.
The rapidly changing nature of our society is spelled out in detail in a new report on the 2006 census, which reveals that the number of non-Irish people living here almost doubled to 420,000 in the four years since 2002.
And it is truly a rainbow nation, with people from Anguilla to Zambia setting up home here.
The report of the non-Irish population, released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) yesterday, found that the largest group was British nationals, who numbered 112,000, followed by Poles (63,200), Lithuanians (24,600), Nigerians (16,300) and Latvians (13,300).
It is thought that the number of Poles living in Ireland could actually top 200,000 today.
But the official figures documenting the explosion in migration up to 2006 alone meant that non-Irish nationals made up almost 10pc of the population compared with 5.8pc (224,000) at the time of the previous census in 2002.
"We've never seen such a dramatic increase in inward migration ever in Ireland -- it's unprecedented," Deirdre Cullen, senior statistician with the CSO, said yesterday.
'Unprecedented'
"A lot of it happened after May 2004 with the admission of the latest accession states to the EU. I think the range of countries from which people have arrived is very interesting, because if there are even one or two children from each of those countries, then that's a huge challenge to various service providers."
The top 10 countries, which also include the US, China, Germany, the Philippines and France, account for 82pc of the total non-Irish population. But there were 44 countries, including Guyana, St Vincent, Turkmenistan and Bhutan, represented by fewer than 10 people.
The study found that the non-Irish population had a strikingly different demographic profile to the Irish. Non-Irish groups were dominated by people in their 20s and 30s, with significantly more men than women. There were few children and older people among the non-Irish population.
"Looking through the report and the labour force participation rate among non-Irish nationals across all the groups, it's a safe conclusion that most people are here to work," Ms Cullen said.
The report's authors also pointed out that the widely held view of non-Irish being young and single didn't hold up to scrutiny with almost 42pc married compared with 46pc of the Irish population.
Three out of every five Polish men, for example, are married but not living with their wives -- echoing the situation of Irish men living in England in the 1950s -- and sending money home to their families.
In general, foreign nationals were concentrated either in cities, particularly Dublin and Galway, or in popular tourist destinations along the western and southern coasts.
In terms of property, owner occupancy is by far the most common among Irish and British-headed households but almost 80pc of households headed by people from countries that joined the EU since 2004 were renting.
"The main point was to get across the diversity of non-Irish nationals here -- that it's not a 'them and us' situation, that there is a lot of colour there," Ms Cullen said. "We've people here from Britain and the USA a long time, people retired here, people married to Irish people and then we've more-recent arrivals. It's not really a single group."
In the 2002 census, Britons made up almost half of all non-Irish nationals, but that percentage has fallen to one-quarter -- despite the fact that an extra 9,000 now live here
There are 195 independent states in the world, and people from 188 of them were living in Ireland at the time of the last census.
The rapidly changing nature of our society is spelled out in detail in a new report on the 2006 census, which reveals that the number of non-Irish people living here almost doubled to 420,000 in the four years since 2002.
And it is truly a rainbow nation, with people from Anguilla to Zambia setting up home here.
The report of the non-Irish population, released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) yesterday, found that the largest group was British nationals, who numbered 112,000, followed by Poles (63,200), Lithuanians (24,600), Nigerians (16,300) and Latvians (13,300).
It is thought that the number of Poles living in Ireland could actually top 200,000 today.
But the official figures documenting the explosion in migration up to 2006 alone meant that non-Irish nationals made up almost 10pc of the population compared with 5.8pc (224,000) at the time of the previous census in 2002.
"We've never seen such a dramatic increase in inward migration ever in Ireland -- it's unprecedented," Deirdre Cullen, senior statistician with the CSO, said yesterday.
'Unprecedented'
"A lot of it happened after May 2004 with the admission of the latest accession states to the EU. I think the range of countries from which people have arrived is very interesting, because if there are even one or two children from each of those countries, then that's a huge challenge to various service providers."
The top 10 countries, which also include the US, China, Germany, the Philippines and France, account for 82pc of the total non-Irish population. But there were 44 countries, including Guyana, St Vincent, Turkmenistan and Bhutan, represented by fewer than 10 people.
The study found that the non-Irish population had a strikingly different demographic profile to the Irish. Non-Irish groups were dominated by people in their 20s and 30s, with significantly more men than women. There were few children and older people among the non-Irish population.
"Looking through the report and the labour force participation rate among non-Irish nationals across all the groups, it's a safe conclusion that most people are here to work," Ms Cullen said.
The report's authors also pointed out that the widely held view of non-Irish being young and single didn't hold up to scrutiny with almost 42pc married compared with 46pc of the Irish population.
Three out of every five Polish men, for example, are married but not living with their wives -- echoing the situation of Irish men living in England in the 1950s -- and sending money home to their families.
In general, foreign nationals were concentrated either in cities, particularly Dublin and Galway, or in popular tourist destinations along the western and southern coasts.
In terms of property, owner occupancy is by far the most common among Irish and British-headed households but almost 80pc of households headed by people from countries that joined the EU since 2004 were renting.
"The main point was to get across the diversity of non-Irish nationals here -- that it's not a 'them and us' situation, that there is a lot of colour there," Ms Cullen said. "We've people here from Britain and the USA a long time, people retired here, people married to Irish people and then we've more-recent arrivals. It's not really a single group."
In the 2002 census, Britons made up almost half of all non-Irish nationals, but that percentage has fallen to one-quarter -- despite the fact that an extra 9,000 now live here