PA Newswire: Ireland, December 18, 2007
Ireland's Population Fastest Growing in EU
Ireland has the fastest growing population in the EU, new figures revealed today.
The Central Statistics Office found the population grew by 2.5% to a 4.34 million people in the year to April 2007 - with the migration of 109,500 people accounting for two thirds of the increase.
The remaining one third was from an natural population increase.
It was the third year in a row the population rose by more than 2%.
The CSO figures on Population and Migration Estimates for 2007 showed 48% of immigrants were nationals of the 12 new EU accession states, including Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and Latvia.
More than half of immigrants were aged 25-44 and a further 28% were aged 15-24, while 1 in 10 were children.
The data also revealed only half of the non-Irish nationals assigned PPS numbers in 2004 had insurable employment in Ireland at any time during the last year.
Also released for the first time was an analysis of PPSNs (personal public service numbers) to foreign nationals from 2002-2006 and employer end-of-year (P35) returns for non-Irish nationals.
It showed the percentages of arrivals in each of the years 2002 to 2005 who have never worked in Ireland up to the end of 2006 varies from 22% to 27%.
While this will include some who left the country without any employment, it will also include those not in the labour force, such as students, those who are looking after a home or family, and retired people.
The analysis also shows that 41% of arrivals during 2006 had no employment up to the end of that year, though this figure is high because some arrivals in late 2006 would not have got employment until early this year.
"The analysis of the PPSN allocations and the P35 returns clearly shows that a majority of non-Irish nationals receiving PPSN do not remain in the country in the longer term,'' said a CSO spokesman.
"Accordingly, perceptions of migration flows based solely on the allocations would tend to grossly inflate the movements.
"In addition, as the above table indicates, the data on migrant flows based on P35 returns is broadly reconcilable with the Census 2006 snapshot of non-Irish nationals who recorded themselves as employees.
"The reliability of the Census from the point of view of its coverage of the non-Irish national population is therefore supported by this finding.''
Meanwhile, the estimated number of emigrants from the country was 42,200, also considerably higher than recent years.