ANALYSIS:The census does not support reports of 1,000 Irish people leaving each week or a mass exodus of recent arrivals
THE PRELIMINARY results from the 2011 census, produced with impressive speed by the Central Stastics Office, show that 4,581,269 people were resident in the Republic on April 10th, an increase of 8.1 per cent since the last census five years ago.
The increase may come as a surprise to many people, given the frequency of media reports about the return of mass emigration. But migration is just one component of population change, and its importance to population levels in Ireland has been over-estimated in recent months. The preliminary results show this clearly.
The three other components of population change are births, deaths and migration.
There were 73,724 babies born in Ireland in 2010 – a drop from the high of 2008, but still representing a 27 per cent increase over the number of births in 2001.
The annual birth rate in Ireland in 2010 – the number of births per 1,000 of the population – was 15.4. This is the highest birth rate in Europe, where the average birth rate is 10.7. In contrast, the death rate in Ireland – the number of deaths per 1,000 of the population – has consistently decreased over the last 10 years.
In 2010, the death rate was 6.1, a drop from 7.7 in 2001. This compares to the European average of 9.6. Just over 27,000 people died in Ireland in 2010. The difference between the numbers of births and numbers of deaths in any year is described as natural change. Ireland is one of just three countries in Europe – the others are Poland and Cyprus – where the cause of population growth is natural change.
Over the period 2006-2011, there are interesting geographical variations in the birth rate. While the overall birth rate was 16.5, this ranged from 20.7 in Fingal to 13.9 in Roscommon and 13.4 in Cork city.
In general, birth rates were higher than the national average in Leinster and Munster, and lower in Connacht and the three counties in Ulster.
This has implications for the rate of natural change, which varies from an increase of 8.2 in the Border and west regions (Connacht and the three Ulster counties), to 14.6 in the mideast region (Kildare, Meath and Wicklow).
Despite recent reports of 1,000 people leaving Ireland every week, the preliminary results do not provide sufficient evidence to support this figure.
Instead, the report shows that there has been net migration of 118,650 in the period 2006-2011. In other words, more people moved to Ireland than left the country in the last five years: the average annual figure for net migration is 23,730.
While the extent of migration from Ireland has certainly increased in recent years, people continue to move to the country, as is clear from data on PPS numbers issued by the Department of Social and Family Affairs. Over 60,000 PPS numbers were allocated to foreign nationals in both 2009 and 2010. Though this is a significant drop from the peak year of 2006, when over 200,000 PPS numbers were issued to foreign nationals, it is important to recognise that migration to Ireland is ongoing, though on a smaller scale.
It is more difficult to provide a snapshot of migration to and from specific regions in Ireland from the preliminary results.
There are estimated figures for net migration, which suggest that, apart from the four cities and south Dublin, all areas experienced net inward migration. The highest levels of net inward migration are estimated to have occurred in Laois, Cavan and Longford. However, this estimate includes migration from other parts of Ireland, so does not necessarily reflect levels of international migration to and from specific areas.
Thus, high levels of net inward migration may be connected to internal migration, and so the estimates do not indicate areas that have experienced a significant increase in emigration. Later reports, scheduled for publication in 2012, should provide more insight into the impacts of international migration on specific regions.
While the results provide limited insights into the issue of migration, they do show a key general pattern. This relates to the gender profile of net migration, which highlights important differences between men and women.
Estimated net migration for men in the period was over 33,000, while the corresponding figure for women was just over 85,000. There are two possible ways of explaining this difference.
The first is to suggest that levels of female migration to Ireland were higher than levels of male migration – yet PPS data indicates that this was not the case in any of the years from 2006 to 2009.
The second, more likely, explanation is that levels of male migration from Ireland are higher than levels of female migration. This is further supported by the change in the sex ratio: there are now just 981 males for every 1,000 females in the country, a drop from 2006 when the number of males was marginally higher. This suggests that migration from Ireland in the period from 2006 to 2010 was predominantly by men. This was also the case during the last recession during the 1980s, when male migrants outnumbered female migrants.
Later reports on the 2011 census will provide more specific information on population change and migration, and will show the geographical impacts of socio-economic transformations in more detail.
For now, though, we can see that the predicted exodus from Ireland of recent in-migrants has not taken place, and that people continued to move to, as well as leave, Ireland in the midst of the economic downturn.
These preliminary results thus offer the possibility of a more honest discussion about who now lives in Ireland and what this means for planning and providing services within the State.
However, they also point to new trends in migration from Ireland, which need to be observed closely in the coming months and years.
Dr Mary Gilmartin is a lecturer in geography at NUI Maynooth. Her research focuses on contemporary migration, most recently in a two-year study of recent migrants to Ireland, carried out with Dr Bettina Migge of UCD and funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences