Grafton Street in Dublin. Getty
A total of 12% of Ireland's population is made up of non-Irish citizens, according to the results of Census 2022.
The latest Census data released by the Central Statistics Office on Thursday, October 26 revealed that 632,000 non-Irish citizens were living in Ireland when the last Census was taken in April 2022.
Ireland's population at the time was 5.15 million people, an 8% increase from the 2016 Census when non-Irish citizens accounted for 11% of the population.
More than one in ten of the population were non-Irish citizens in Census 2022https://t.co/JBoJP0sdDt#CSOIreland #Ireland #Census #Census2022 #CensusIreland #Population #Diversity #Migration #Ethnicity #IrishTravellers #Religion
Tags @citizensinfo @davidmurphyRTE pic.twitter.com/WgGM2nnpRq
— Central Statistics Office Ireland (@CSOIreland) October 26, 2023
The CSO's newly-released data, which relates to Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity, Irish Travellers, and Religion, stated that almost half of non-Irish citizens were from the EU, with 313,000 people coming from other member states.
Meanwhile, 83,000 people were from the UK, a drop of 19% compared to the 103,113 UK citizens living in Ireland at the time of Census 2016.
Ballyhaunis in Co Mayo and Ballymahon and Edgeworthstown in Co Longford were the towns with the most diverse populations in Ireland in April 2022, according to the latest CSO data.
In Ballyhaunis, 37% of residents were non-Irish citizens, with Ballymahon (33%) and Edgeworthstown (31%) in second and third place respectively.
Just over one in five people (21%) of residents in Dublin City were non-Irish citizens, while 18% of residents in Galway City were non-Irish.
Meanwhile, Skibbereen in Co Cork and Killarney and Killorglin in Co Kerry had the highest proportion of UK citizens in Ireland.
A total of 18,566 Ukrainian citizens took part in Census 2022, but it is important to note that the Census took place just over a month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with almost 100,000 Ukrainians coming to Ireland since the invasion began in February 2022.
Roughly 3.9 million people, or 77% of the Irish population at the time, identified as White Irish, while the second-largest ethnic group was "Any Other White Background" at 10% of the population.
A total of 94,434 people (2% of the population) identified as Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi, while the number of people identifying as Asian or Asian Irish-Chinese increased by 38% to 26,828.
Some 20,118 people identified as Arab in the new Census, while 16,059 identified as Roma. Both ethnicities were new additions to the Census in 2022.
Only 1%, or 76,245 people, identified as Black or Black Irish, but this represented a 17% increase on the 64,639 people who identified as Black in the 2016 Census.
The number of Irish Travellers increased from 30,987 to 32,949 between 2016 and 2022, an increase of 6%. However, Travellers still make up less than 1% of the Irish population.
The average age of Travellers in Ireland was 27 years old, far below the national average of 39. Only 5% of Travellers were aged 65 or older, compared to 15% of people in the general population.
More than 3.5 million people, or 69% of the population, identified as Catholic, a huge drop from the 79% of the population that identified as Catholics in 2016.
The second-largest religious group was members of the Church of Ireland or England, Anglican, and Episcopalian, with more than 124,700 people identifying as one of the Protestant religions.
The number of people who stated that they had no religion increased to more than 736,000 people, representing 14% of the Irish population and an increase of 63% since the last census.
More than 100,000 people said they were Orthodox (Greek, Coptic, Russian), an increase of 65% since 2016.
Meanwhile, the CSO stated that 46% of Irish households owned their own home compared to just 9% of non-Irish households.
Irish and English were the most common languages spoken in Irish homes, followed by Polish in third, with almost 124,000 people stating that they speak Polish.
Romanian (57,383 people), French (51,568 people), and Spanish (48,113) were the next most commonly spoken languages in Ireland in April 2022.