The number of Irish people living outside Ireland has risen to almost 800,000, according to the international migration figures released by the United Nations.
Their study shows that those Irish-born people living abroad jumped by almost 35,000 in three years, from 737,917 in 2010 to 772,485 in 2013. In a country with a population of 4.5 million this figure is significant.
According to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) of Ireland 89,000 people leave the country every year, while 55,900 arrive to replace them.
Declan Smyth, a statistician from the CSO told the Epoch Times, “Some people take a year out to go abroad to see the world, so you have a mix of people that are emigrating...You can be sure that people are leaving for all sorts of reasons and they all have different stories as to why they are going.”
The United States, Canada and Australia remained popular emigration spots among the Irish, but the United Kingdom remains the most popular.
As of 2013 the country breakdown is as follows:
UK – 412,658
USA – 143,571
Australia – 77,513
Spain - 17,519
Germany - 12,375
Poland - 8,136
The amazing migration figures show that as of 2013 a total of 232 million people, 3.2 percent of the world’s population, had moved to another country. This is a huge increase from 175 million in 2000 and 154 million in 1990.
The increase in people living abroad can be put down to more open boarders and cheaper air travel as well as economic and political reasons.
The figures also show that in Ireland emigration figures have dropped since 2000 when 850,000 Irish lived aboard. This drop is due to the number of Irish opting to live in the United Kingdom. In 2000 close to 500,000 were living in Britain.
Fianna Fail’s spokesman on Foreign Affairs Brendan Smith told the Irish Mirror the reason for the decline in the number of Irish living in the UK could be due to the Celtic Tiger boom in the early and mid-2000s.
He said, “In the 2000s people were coming back to Ireland, when the economy was strong people were coming back from Britain.
“For a long time there was practically no emigration to England and a lot of Irish people returned from England to live in Ireland, that would definitely be a factor in the decline of Irish-born people in the country.
“However, there has always been a tradition of emigration in Ireland and since the recession there has been strong emigration again, unfortunately.”
The Irish living farthest away from home are in New Zealand, 11,574.9 miles (18,628km) away from home. The country with the fewest Irish is St Helena, a British-owned island off the coast of South Africa, where there are only two Irish people.
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