11% of the Cork population are non-Irish

NON-Irish nationals make up 11% of Cork’s population, according to the latest Census figures.

Data released yesterday by the Central Statistics Office shows that almost 60,000 non-Irish nationals are now living in the city and county.

Between 2011 and 2016, 9,116 ‘new arrivals’ moved to the county, an increase on the more than 3,400 from previous Census data.

The figures provide a clear trend in the countries from which immigrants are coming from - almost half of the 60,000 non-nationals resident here arrived from Poland or the UK.

In Census 2016, 59,050 people resident in Cork stated that they were non-Irish nationals, an increase of 2.7% (1,542) from 2011.

The county's non-national population now stands at 11.%, a slight drop of 0.2% based on the same data from six years ago.

The figures in Cork reflect those at national level with 11.6% of the population having been born outside of Ireland.

There are over 16,000 Polish nationals residing on Cork with the second largest nationality those from the UK, at 12,600.

Lithuanians, Romanians, Latvians and Brazilians make up the bulk of the other nationalities living here.

Cork city has a higher non-national percentage of the population resident within its environs (14.1%) compared to the county (10.1%).

The 535,475 non-Irish nationals living in Ireland in April 2016 came from 200 different nations.

Polish nationals were the largest group with 122,515 persons followed by 103,113 UK nationals and 36,552 Lithuanians. Just twelve nations each with over 10,000 residents – America, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Spain and the UK – accounted for 73.6% of the total non-Irish national population.

The top languages spoken in Ireland, besides English, were Polish (113,225), Lithuanian (30,502) Romanian (26,645) and Portuguese (16,737).

On average, non-nationals tend to be younger than those born here at 34.8 years compared to the average age of Irish nationals, which now stands at 37.7.

The figures show a high proportion of those coming to Ireland are returning nationals with 28,143 of over 82,000 coming into the country being Irish citizens.

Some 104,784 people hold dual citizenship, a figure which has increased by 87% since 2011. Households with more than one nationality living under the roof now stands at 134,000