Towns in Mayo and Longford revealed as having the most diverse populations in the State

Towns in Mayo and Longford have been revealed as having the most diverse populations in the Republic, according to Central Statistic Office (CSO) diversity and ethnicity data released on Thursday.

Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo was the town with the highest proportion of non-Irish residents at 37 per cent. Some 5 per cent of the town’s population were Brazilian, 4 per cent were Poles and 3 per cent were Croatian, according to the data, which was based on Census 2022.

Ballymahon, Co Longford where exactly one third of the population were non-Irish citizens, 10 per cent of residents were Polish and 8 per cent Brazilian. In Edgeworthstown - also in Co Longford - 31 per cent of the population was non-Irish, including 118 Latvians (5 per cent of the town’s population), 109 Poles and 90 Lithuanians. The town of Gort in Co Galway continues to boast one of Ireland’s largest Brazilian communities who make up 13 per cent of the local population.

Some 12 per cent (632,000 people) of Ireland’s population of 5.15 million were recorded as non Irish-citizens in April 2022. Of these, half were EU citizens and more than 83,000 came from the UK, a drop of 19 per cent on the 103,113 UK citizens living here in 2016.

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The towns of Skibbereen in Co Cork and Kenmare and Killorglin in Co Kerry had the highest share of UK citizens.

Among cities, Dublin had the highest number of non-Irish citizenship residents (21 per cent) followed by Galway city with 19 per cent. Poles made up 28 per cent of non-Irish citizens in Carlow and 25 per cent in Laois, compared to just 6 per cent in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Dublin city.

Some 18,566 Ukrainian citizens took part in the census in April 2022, although it is important to note this was just one month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many of these indicated Ireland was not their usual country of residence and so were not included in the overall citizenship figures. To date, nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have come to Ireland seeking support and protection.

Some 3.9 million people, or 77 per cent of those who took part in the census, identified as White Irish; the next largest ethnic group was Any Other White background at 10 per cent, while 2 per cent (94,434) said they were of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi background.

While only 1 per cent of the overall population identified as Black or Black Irish (76,245), this represented a 17 per cent increase from the 64,639 who made up this group in 2016.

The number of people identifying as Asian or Asian Irish-Chinese increased by 38 per cent to 26,828.

Some 20,115 people identified as Arab and 16,059 as Roma, both new editions to the ethnicity section of the census form along with Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi.

While English and Irish are the most common languages spoken in Irish homes, nearly 124,000 people spoke Polish at home, followed by 57,383 people who spoke Romanian, 51,568 who spoke French and 48,113 who spoke Spanish.

The number of Irish Travellers living in the State increased by 6 per cent from 30,987 to 32,949. However, Travellers still only make up less than 1 per cent of the population.

Travellers were on average younger than the general population at 27 years of age versus the national average age of 39 years. Just 5 per cent of Irish Travellers were aged 65 or older compared to 15 per cent of the general population in this age group.

People from the UK living in Ireland tended to be older, with an average age of 50, while Ukrainians were the youngest people living in the State with an average age of 25 years.

The number of people who said they had no religion increased 63 per cent from the 2016 census to 736,000 representing more than 14 per cent of the population. Some 69 per cent of people identified as Roman Catholic, a fall from 79 per cent in 2016.

People aged 25-29 years were most likely to say they had “no religion” – only 53 per cent of this cohort identified as Catholic.

This age-group also had the highest proportion of Hindus. Almost half of Indian citizens in Ireland were Hindu, while 70 per cent of Polish citizens said they were Catholic.

More than 100,000 people stated they were Orthodox (Greek, Coptic, Russian), an increase of 65 per cent since the last census.

Census data also found 46 per cent of Irish households owned their own home compared to just 9 per cent of non-Irish households.

Some 80 per cent of households headed by a non-Irish citizen who migrated to Ireland in the year before the census were renting their home from a private landlord and paying an average weekly rent of €372. This contrasts to the 42 per cent of private rentals where the head of household was a recent Irish immigrant paying an average rent of €340 per week. In both cases, the weekly rent was much higher than the national average weekly rent of €273.