Irish society is more urban and ethnically diverse than ever before, according to the latest results from the 2002 census.
The population is also getting older, producing fewer children and speaking less Irish, according to the Principal Demographic Statistics published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The survey quantifies the huge social changes of the past decade, including the growth in immigration, the legalisation of divorce and increases in the number of lone-parent and no-children families.
The arrival of large numbers of asylum-seekers and other migrants is reflected in the census, although many would regard the counts of some non-national populations as under-estimates.
One person in 10, or 10.4 per cent of the population, was born outside the State, compared to 7 per cent in the last census in 1996. The non-national population is recorded as 5.8 per cent.
As usual, the largest foreign-born populations come from English-speaking countries, particularly England and Wales (182,624), Northern Ireland (49,928), the USA (21,541) and Scotland (15,963).
The next largest populations come from Nigeria (9,225), Germany (8,770) and France (6,794). The communities of people born in South Africa, Romania, China and Australia each number about 6,000.
A question on nationality produced a somewhat different picture with, for example, just 103,000 people claiming British nationality.
The census figures give a breakdown of the population by age, sex, marital status, household composition, usual residence, nationality and place of birth, as well as information on the Irish language, religion and Travellers.
The 2002 census, which recorded a total population of 3,917,203, was the first in which the population of Leinster exceeded 2 million. Its share of the overall population of the State has increased in every census since 1926 while the numbers residing in the other provinces have fallen.
Six out of every 10 people lived in urban areas in 2002 compared with fewer than one in three at the time of the foundation of the State.
However, the share of population accounted for by the greater Dublin area has actually fallen - from 26.3 per cent in 1996 to 25.6 per cent in 2002.
While the number of single people is increasing rapidly, the bad news for women is that the female population of the State exceeds the male population by 25,000.
Some 1.57 million of us say that we can speak Irish, up from 1.43 million in the last census. However, this represents a slight decline from 43.5 per cent to 42.8 per cent of the population.
Galway city and county, Limerick county and Clare have the highest proportions of Irish-speakers, and Dublin city, Louth and Wexford the lowest.
Worryingly for the Irish-language community, the proportion of Irish speakers declined in all Gaeltacht areas except Meath.
Just 56 per cent of Irish speakers in Gaeltacht areas speak Irish on a daily basis; a further 11 per cent say that they use the language weekly.
There are 24,000 Travellers in the State, according to the 2002 census, which was the first to ask this question. The age structure of Travellers is very different from the general population, with a median age of 18 years compared to the national figure of 32.
Longford (1.8 per cent) and Galway city have the highest proportions of Travellers, and Kildare, Cork county and Waterford county (0.3 per cent) the lowest.
Pavée Point said last night that the number of Travellers had probably been undercounted because the question of ethnicity had not been asked of the rest of the population.
