On 30 May 2023, The Central Statistics Office released summary results from 2022 Census which includes details of population changes since Census 2016, as well as data on longer term trends. The summary results also share information on the population’s age and sex, marital status, citizenship, employment, and more.
Below are excerpts from the summary results with a focus on migration and integration.
Population change and migration
- Ireland’s population increased by 8.1% since 2016 to reach 5,149,139. This is the first time the population has exceeded five million since 1851.
- The average age of the population increased from 37.4 in 2016 to 38.8 in 2022.
- Net migration and natural increase resulted in a population increase of 387,274 since 2016, with net migration contributing 219,787 to the increase.
- The growth in annual average estimated net migration (36,631) was larger than the annual average natural increase (27,915) between 2016 and 2022. This marks a change from the previous two censuses when natural increases accounted for more of the population growth.
Citizenship*
- 84% of the usually resident population indicated that they had either Irish or dual Irish citizenship.
- The number of non-Irish citizens increased in 2022 to reach 631,785, accounting for 12% of the population.
- The biggest non-Irish groups were Polish and UK citizens followed by Indian, Romanian and Lithuanian. Brazilian, Italian, Latvian and Spanish citizens were also among the larger non-Irish groups.
*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 figures published here on country of citizenship which are based on people who were usually resident in Ireland at the time of the census.
Dual Citizenship
- The number of people with dual Irish citizenship increased by 63% from 2016 to 170,597.
- People born in Ireland account for 37% of this group.
- The largest groups of dual Irish citizens were Irish-UK, Irish-American, Irish-Polish and Irish-Australian.
Place of birth
- 20% of the usually resident population was born outside of Ireland. This includes people born in Northern Ireland and UK. This represented 1,017,437 people, an increase of 207,031 since 2016.
- The biggest increases were recorded in the number of people born in India (up 35,673), Brazil (up 23,760) and Romania (up 13,758).
Ethnic Group/Background
In Census 2022, a revised question on Ethnic Group/Background was asked, introducing several new ethnic groups such as Roma, Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi and Arab.
- Of the population usually resident and present in the State in 2022, 77% identified as White Irish.
- Of the new ethnic groups added for Census 2022, 94,434 people identified as Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi.
- A further 20,115 identified as Arab and 16,059 as Roma.
- The number of usually resident Irish Travellers increased by 6% to 32,949.
- Compared with 2016, people in the Other Asian ethnic group almost halved to 44,944, which may be due to the introduction of the Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi category.
- The number of people identifying as Chinese increased to 26,828.
Religion
The question on religion used in Census 2022 differed from the Census 2016 version which may impact comparability. See the Background Notes for more details.
- 3,515,861 (69%) usually resident people identified as Roman Catholic. This represents a decline from 3,696,644 (79%) in 2016.
- The figure for people with no religion increased by 284,269 to 736,210.
- Other categories with large numbers included Orthodox (100,165) and Islam (81,930).
- The number of people who identified as Hindu more than doubled from 13,729 to 33,043.
Language
- In 2022, 751,507 people usually resident in Ireland spoke a language other than English or Irish at home, representing an increase of 23% from 612,018 in 2016.
- The number of people speaking Polish at home declined by 9% to 123,968 but continues to be the most commonly spoken foreign language.
- The number of people speaking French and Russian at home also declined, both by 6%.
- The fastest growing language spoken was Ukrainian (up 165%), followed by Hindi (154%) and Croatian (137%).
- The number of people speaking Portuguese at home more than doubled to almost 44,000.
Level of English by Citizenship
Of the 751,507 usually resident people who spoke a foreign language at home, 57% indicated that they spoke English very well, and a further 26% that they spoke English well. 11% indicated that they did not speak English well and 2% did not speak it at all.
- Over 80% of Polish citizens and 91% of Indian citizens reported that they spoke English either very well or well.
- Some of the highest percentages of English spoken very well or well were recorded for citizens from Malta (98%), Denmark (97%) and South Africa (96%).
- Lower percentages were recorded for citizens from Ukraine (44%), Moldova (57%), Syria (61%) and China (71%).
Languages Spoken by Irish-born Population
Of the 751,507 people who spoke a language other than English or Irish at home, 212,285 were born in Ireland.
- The most commonly spoken languages were French (32,244 people) and Polish (32,060 people).
- A further 18,966 Irish-born people spoke Spanish at home.
For more information from the Summary results of the 2022 Census:
