Census: There's no place like home
Nearly one in six people now based in Ireland have lived abroad for more than 12 months, according to new census figures.
Latest returns from last year’s census, released in Dublin today, showed that nationwide 15% of the 3.9 million population had spent a year on foreign soil.
But in western counties, the traditional centres of emigration from Ireland, the figures were appreciably higher – 22% in Mayo, 21% in Donegal and Leitrim and 20% in Galway.
Figures from the census – undertaken a year later than originally planned because of the 1991 foot-and-mouth disease crisis – found that 90% of the population was born within the State and that 70% were now living in the county of their birth, the Central Statistics Office reported.
It also indicated that 76,000 people moved to Ireland in the 12 months prior to the census, and the highest proportion of non-Irish nationals was in the 25-34 years age group
The population now includes some 644,400 long-term migrants who went to live in Ireland in the six years to 2002.
More than half of the long-term immigrants were returning-Irish, with 366,800 moving back over that period, mostly from the UK. The rest were foreign born.
Of those who moved to Ireland in the last 12 months, 44% were aged between 20 and 29 years, while two out of three were single.
