Ireland’s population continues to strongly increase, though the rate of growth is slowing, according to the latest European Union estimates.
Ireland has one of the healthiest demographics in Europe, but only relative to countries where more people are dying than being born.
The population of the State reached 5.32 million at the start of last year, an annual increase of 81,000 or 1.5 per cent in 2023, according to Eurostat, the European Commission‘s statistical agency.
In 2022, when there was a surge of Ukrainian refugees as a result of the Russian invasion, the population increased by 117,000 or 2.2 per cent.
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According to Eurostat, there were 135,617 immigrants to Ireland in 2023, compared with 157,537 in 2022. There was also a spike in emigration from Ireland with 75,020 leaving in 2023 (34,000 of whom were Irish nationals) compared with 61,133 in 2022.
Ireland’s rate of population growth is almost four times the EU average of 0.4 per cent. The EU took in 1.6 million Ukrainian refugees in 2023 among six million immigrants who entered the EU. Otherwise, the population of the bloc as a whole would have declined.
Since the 2004 accession treaty, which admitted 10 states from eastern Europe, the population of the Irish State, then at just four million, has increased by a third. Only Luxembourg (plus 48 per cent) and Malta (plus 41 per cent) have seen higher population growth.
By contrast the population of the EU has grown by only 4 per cent since 2004 from 432.8 million to 449.2 million at the start of 2024. There has been a large transfer of population from east to West with countries including Romania, Poland and Lithuania seeing sharp population declines.
The Eurostat analysis shows Ireland retains the healthiest demographics in an increasingly ageing EU.
Ireland is one of only seven EU countries out of 27 where the birth rate continues to exceed the death rate. Since 2012 Europe’s population growth has been negative as deaths have been greater than births since then.
Ireland’s natural population growth continues to be positive and was 3.7 per 1,000 in 2023. However, it has fallen off and the baby boom of the noughties, which fuelled the population increase, is over.
The birth rate in 2023, at 10.3 per 1,000, is the second highest in Europe after Cyprus and looks positive, but it peaked at 16.7 in 2008 during the Celtic Tiger boom.
Ireland’s is the youngest population in the EU at a median age of 39.4 (the age at which half the population is younger and half is older) compared with the EU average of 44.7 years.
The number of people aged 65 and over in Ireland, at 15.5 per cent, compares with an EU average of 21.7 per cent. The death rate at 6.6 per 1,000 in Ireland is the lowest in Europe.
Irish first-time mothers are among the second-oldest in the EU at 31.6 years, and Ireland has the joint highest number of women giving birth over the age of 40 (11 per cent).
