Ireland's population increased by 56,000 in the year to April 2020, according to the Central Statistics Office.

One third of the 85,400 people who immigrated to Ireland in the year were returning Irish nationals, the highest number since 2007. Overall, non-Irish nationals made up 12.9% of the population in April, a total of 644,400.

Age-wise, the numbers aged 65 years or more rose by 14.3% to 720,100.  KBC Bank chief economist Austin Hughes commented that the Irish economy is still very much in a sweet spot demographically, in that numbers in the prime working age groups of 25-44 are still double that of over-65s.

CSO statistician James Hegarty stated: “The combined effect of positive net migration and natural increase resulted in population growth of 1.1% in the year to April 2020, compared to an increase of 1.3% in the year to April 2019. This annual increase brings the population estimate in the Republic of Ireland to 4.98 million.

“The number of births was 58,300 while the number of deaths was 31,200, resulting in a natural increase of 27,100 in the year. This is the lowest level of natural increase recorded since the 2001 population estimates.

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“In the year to April, 56,500 non-Irish nationals arrived to live in Ireland and 28,200 non-Irish nationals emigrated. Therefore, net inward migration among non-Irish nationals decreased to 28,300 in 2020 from 35,800 in 2019."

Austin Hughes believes the decline in immigration could be a statistical anomaly. “It could be the case that the slowdown in net inward migration reflects bottlenecks such as housing problems or skill mismatches, but broadly rising wages and reported skill shortages in many areas would suggest this would not be a binding constraint," he said.

“It may be the case, as previous Census-related revisions have revealed, that there is a tendency in these survey-based annual population estimates to understate the true pace of population increase.”

Hughes noted that Ireland’s main source of growth in numbers is the natural increase. “The gap between births and deaths is positive in only ten out of 27 countries in the EU and negative for the region as a whole. Ireland’s ‘natural’ increase of 0.6% is the fastest in the EU. As a result, the drivers of population growth are notably more balanced here than elsewhere.”

The full range of data is available here.

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