This publication is part of a series of results from Census 2022. More thematic publications will be published throughout 2023 as outlined in the Census 2022 Publication Schedule.
In Census 2016, people were asked to indicate their nationality. In Census 2022 the question was changed to ‘What is your country of citizenship?’. This question is used to collect data on the number of people with Irish, non-Irish citizenship and dual citizenship (both Irish and non-Irish).
In April 2022, there were 631,785 non-Irish citizens living in Ireland, accounting for 12% of the usually resident and present population, up from 11% of the population in 2016.
Almost half of people with non-Irish citizenship (312,909) were citizens of other European Union (EU) countries, an increase of 2% in the six years since Census 2016.
The number of citizens from European countries outside of the EU increased by 131% to over 25,000. This increase was largely driven by immigration from Ukraine.
There were 83,347 UK citizens, 13% of the non-Irish population resident in Ireland. The number of UK citizens living in Ireland fell over the last two censuses, down by over 19% from 103,113 in 2016 after a fall of 8% between 2011 and 2016.
There were just over 100,000 citizens of Asian countries living in Ireland, 16% of the non-Irish population.
The inward migration of Indian citizens between 2016 and 2022 was the major contributor to the 98% increase in Asian citizens living in Ireland.
There were 18,566 people present in the State on Census Night who indicated that their country of citizenship was Ukraine. Many of these people indicated that their country of usual residence was not Ireland, so they are not included in the main figures on country of citizenship which are based on people who were usually resident in Ireland at the time of the census.
The proportion of the usually resident population which had non-Irish citizenship was highest in Dublin City at 21% followed by Galway City at 18% and Fingal at 17%.
Polish citizens made up 28% of all non-Irish citizens in Carlow and 25% in Laois compared with just 6% in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Dublin City.
In Donegal, 36% of the non-Irish population were citizens of the United Kingdom in contrast with Dublin City where just 6% were UK citizens.
The highest number of Indian citizens were resident in Dublin City (10,308), Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (4,958) and South Dublin (4,450).
Ballyhaunis (37%), Ballymahon (33%) and Edgeworthstown (31%) were the towns with the largest proportions of non-Irish citizens.
In Ballyhaunis, 5% of the population were Brazilian citizens, 4% were Polish and 3% were Croatian while in Ballymahon, Polish citizens accounted for 10% of the population, with Brazilian citizens making up a further 8%.
The towns of Skibbereen (5%) in Co. Cork and Kenmare (5%) and Killorglin (4%) in Co. Kerry had the highest share of UK citizens.
In Gort Co. Galway, 13% of the population were Brazilian citizens.
The population of non-Irish citizens was split almost evenly by sex, but there was variation among the citizens of different countries.
Nearly 61% of Ukrainian and US citizens were female as were 57% of Spanish and German citizens. Citizens of Croatia (55%) and Romania, India and the UK (54%) were more likely to be male than female.
In 2022, non-Irish citizens had an average age of 36 years compared with an average age of over 39 years for Irish citizens. The average age of both non-Irish and Irish citizens increased over recent censuses.
UK citizens were something of an outlier with an average age of nearly 50 years. German citizens were also on average older than Irish citizens with an average age of 42 years.
Ukrainian citizens had an average age of 25 years.
The population pyramid shows that there were two main age cohorts of Indian citizens living in Ireland: almost 75% were aged from 23 to 43 years and the other main cohort was children of primary school age.
The pyramid for US citizens shows us that there were twice as many women as men in their twenties and thirties.
The number of Brazilians living in Ireland was 27,338 and nearly 80% were aged between 23 and 43 years compared with just 25% of Irish citizens.
The most common language spoken at home other than English or Irish was Polish with nearly 124,000 speakers.
Over 50% of Polish speakers could speak English very well, 31% could speak it well, 12% could not speak English well and 2% could not speak it at all.
Romanian was the second most common language spoken at home with over 57,000 speakers.
One in five people who spoke Romanian at home could either not speak English well or could not speak it at all.
There were over 51,500 French speakers and 13% of these did not speak English well or at all.
People who spoke Polish at home were nearly all either Polish (63%) or Irish (35%) citizens.
French speakers were mostly Irish (73%) and French (18%) citizens with a further 3% being citizens of African countries.
Just under half of Spanish speakers were Irish citizens, 27% were Spanish citizens and 15% were citizens of countries in the Other America category (excluding Brazil and the USA).
Explore census data from county level to neighbourhood (Small Area) level
