Search

06 Sept 2025

More than 10% of population now classed as non-Irish

Census 2022 will show a changing Donegal

The latest census information shows that 12% of the population is non-Irish

Over 10 per cent of the population in Ireland is classed as non-Irish citizens, according to information from last year's census. 

There were almost 632,000 non-Irish citizens living in Ireland in Census 2022, which was 12% of the population.

Almost 313,000, or nearly half, were citizens of European Union (EU) countries, and over 83,000 were UK citizens.

In the year preceding the census, over 89,500 people moved to Ireland.

Almost 10,000 of the people who moved to Ireland in the year preceding Census 2022 came from India while over 5,000 came from Brazil.

Just under 3.9 million or 77% of people identified their ethnic group or background as White Irish. 

The next largest ethnic group was Any Other White background at 10%, followed by Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi at 2%, and Black or Black Irish at 1%.

The number of usually resident Irish Travellers increased by 6% to 32,949. Looking at the overall population, 15% were aged 65 years and over compared with just 5% of Irish Travellers.

Over 736,000 people or 14% of the population living in Ireland reported they had no religion, an increase of 63% from Census 2016.

To continue reading this article,
please subscribe and support local journalism!


Subscribing will allow you access to all of our premium content and archived articles.

Subscribe

To continue reading this article for FREE,
please kindly register and/or log in.


Registration is absolutely 100% FREE and will help us personalise your experience on our sites. You can also sign up to our carefully curated newsletter(s) to keep up to date with your latest local news!

Register / Login

Buy the e-paper of the Donegal Democrat, Donegal People's Press, Donegal Post and Inish Times here for instant access to Donegal's premier news titles.

Keep up with the latest news from Donegal with our daily newsletter featuring the most important stories of the day delivered to your inbox every evening at 5pm.