Fun with Population Statistics

Came across some figures from the Central Statistics Office today. In the 2006 census, there were 12,475 American expatriates living in Ireland. Seems like a lotta Yankees, until you consider that it's only about .3% of the entire Irish population. Given that just under 10% of the population are non-Irish, that means that Americans make up about 3% of all non-Irish people.

UK citizens (of which there are 112,548) make up about 2.7% of the population in Ireland and 26.8% of the non-Irish population. The CSO website doesn't seem to indicate how many of those UK citizens are from Northern Ireland versus Great Britain, but it would be interesting to find that out. Personally, I think I've met about 3 or 4 Northern Irish folks and about the same number from other parts of Britain living here in Dublin (2 English, 1 Welshman, and a Scottish girl).

The next largest group of non-Irish are Polish with 63,276 (including fellow Dublin Blogger, Oskar, and a lovely family of 4 living across the street from us), making up about 1.5% of the population in Ireland and 15% of the non-Irish population.

I'd say Ireland is becoming a pretty international place, though probably not as much as England or other parts of Europe just yet. And this international flavour is much more pronounced in Dublin. (On a side note, my wife and I had an interesting conversation with a young man from Iraq serving tables in a classy little restaurant in Cashel last summer.)