Diversity in Ireland 

In April 2016, there were 535,475 non-Irish nationals living in Ireland, a 1.6 per cent decrease on the 2011 figure (544,357). The proportion of the population who were non-Irish nationals has also fallen from 12.2 per cent in 2011 to 11.6 per cent in 2016. This fall in non-Irish nationals can in part be explained by the rise in the number of those with dual Irish nationality, who are classified as Irish in the census.

Persons with dual-Irish nationality increased by 87.4 per cent to 104,784 persons in 2016. The largest proportion was Irish-American, which accounted for 16.8 per cent of all dual nationalities, followed by Irish-UK (14.7%) and Irish-Polish (8.8%).

Just 12 countries, each with over 10,000 residents, accounted for 73.6 per cent of all non-Irish nationals in 2016. In the next category 32 countries with between 1,001 and 10,000 residents accounted for a further 19.7 per cent of the total, with the remaining percentage made up of persons from 156 different countries.

Table 1.1 presents the countries of origin of Ireland’s non-Irish national population classified by number of persons.

Interactive table: StatBank Link E7002

Non-Irish nationals at county level

The administrative counties of Dublin City (91,876 persons), Fingal (46,909) and Cork County (42,002) had the highest numbers of non-Irish nationals in 2016. Leitrim (3,526) and Sligo (5,892) had the lowest numbers of non-Irish nationals.

As a proportion of its resident population, Galway City was the most multi-cultural with 18.6 per cent of its residents recorded as non-Irish. Of these, Polish nationals were dominant. Just over 17 per cent of the resident population of Dublin city were non-Irish with Polish, Romanian, UK nationals, Brazilian, Italian, Spanish and French making up more than half of the total 91,876 non-Irish in the city in 2016. One in six of Fingal residents was a non-Irish national with Polish, Romanian, UK and Lithuanian nationals combined accounting for 53.8 per cent of these.

Donegal had the smallest proportion of non-Irish nationals (7.3%) in 2016 and over half of these were UK nationals with 5,860 persons.

Over the 5 year period since 2011, only eight counties recorded an increase in their non-Irish national population. Cork City saw the largest increase rising by 17.2 per cent (2,505 persons) followed by Longford which saw a 9.1 per cent increase (502 persons) and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown where the non-Irish population increased by 5.5 per cent (1,281 persons) to 24,426.

Towns of high non-Irish nationals

Looking at non-Irish population by town shows that Ballyhaunis had the highest proportion of non-Irish nationals with 941 persons representing 39.5 per cent of the total population. This compared with an average non-Irish population of 14.9 per cent for all towns over 1,500 in 2016.

Table 1.2 shows the 10 towns where more than 26 per cent of the population were non-Irish.

Interactive table: StatBank Link E7005

Map 1.2 Nationalities by electoral division, 2016 

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