Ireland's population growth rate fastest in EU

Ireland has the fastest growing population in the EU, according to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office. In the year to April 2007, the population grew by 2.5% to a total figure of 4.34 million people.

This is the third year in a row in which an annual population increase of over 2% was recorded.

The CSO figures reveal that two thirds of the population increase of 106,100 was accounted for by migration, with the remaining one third explained by natural population increase,

The total number of immigrants in the year to April 2007 rose by 2,000 to 109,500 however, the number of emigrants also rose to 42,200. Net migration fell from 71,800 to 67,300.

Today's stats reveal that the total number of immigrants into the country during the year was 109,500, up almost 2,000 on the previous year and substantially higher than for any other year since the CSO began keeping migration figures in 1987.

Some 48% of immigrants during the year came from the 12 new EU accession states which joined in 2004 and 2006.

'Many more arrivals come from Poland than from any other country. In 2006, there were 94,000 arrivals from Poland, and 22,000  from the UK, the next largest country,' the CSO said.

'Within the accession group in 2006, 67% were Polish, 12% Lithuanian, 8% Slovakian, 6% Latvian,  with the remaining 7% coming from the other six states,' it added.

More than half of immigrants were aged 25-44 while a further 28% were aged 15-24. Approximately one in ten of the immigrants were children under  the age of 15.

The CSO today also published an analysis of PPSN allocations for non-Irish nationals. These figures show that just under half of those allocated a PPSN between 2002 and 2005 worked in 2006. For those allocated a PPSN before 2002, about one in three had some level of insurance employment in 2006.