By Staff Reporter

Ireland’s immigrant population has decreased by 1.6 per cent, according to the latest Census 2016 report from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The total of 535,475 non-Irish nationals living in Ireland in April 2016 compares to 544,357 in the 2011 Census, a difference of some 9,000 individuals.

Polish nationals (122,515 people) remain the largest immigrant group in Ireland, even though their overall numbers reduced. There were also drops in the numbers of Lithuanian and Latvian nationals living here.

The largest increases were seen in the Spanish, Romanian and Brazilian populations, with the total of Spanish nationals in Ireland almost doubling (from 6,791 to 12,112) in the five years from 2011 to 2016.

Romanians in Ireland rose by 69 per cent from 17,304 to 29,186 people during the same period, representing the largest increase in population size.

German nationals, meanwhile, were the smallest (11,531 people) of the 10 groups profiled in the new CSO report.

“One of the many benefits of Census data is the information it gives us on the individual groups that make up Ireland’s population,” said CSO senior statistician Cormac Halpin.

This includes details on the concentrations of immigrant groups in the country, with the majority of Brazilians (64%), Romanians, Italians (58%) and Spanish (52%) living in Dublin’s city or suburbs. In contrast, half of all UK nationals preferred rural Ireland.