February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The number of separated and divorced people soared by over 50 percent in six years, religious belief is becoming much more diverse, and the surge in immigration during the Celtic Tiger years has resulted in almost 6 percent of the population now being “non-nationals.”
Though immigration to Ireland has more than quadrupled since 1986, many of the arrivals appear to be returning Irish people, as over a third came from Britain in 2000. Of the remaining immigrants, 13.1 percent came from the EU, 8.1 percent arrived from the U.S., and nearly half came from other countries.
The results show the average age of the population has increased by a year, to 35.1, since 1996, and that 60 percent now live in towns and cities, compared to a third when the State was founded and families are getting smaller.
For the first time, the census asked a question on nationality and it showed 5.8 percent of the population were non-nationals — with almost half (2.7 percent) of them being British. A place-of-birth question showed over 400,000, or 10.4 percent of people presently living in Ireland, were born outside the country, compared to 250,000, or 7 percent, six years earlier.
Nearly a quarter of a million people had been born in Britain and of these, almost 50,000 were born in Northern Ireland.
The proportion born in the rest of the EU increased from 0.5 percent in 1996 to 0.9 percent. The proportion born in the US, which remained constant between 1991 and 1996, increased to 0.6 percent.
The number of foreign-born usual residents from countries other than the EU or U.S. has grown from 26,100 in 1996 to 97,200 and now represents 2.5 per cent of the usually resident population.
The Central Statistics Office found that while the number of Catholics rose, the percentage of Catholics declined from 91.6 percent in 1991 to 88.4 percent last year.
The long-term decline in the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist followers was reversed and there has been a big jump in the number of Muslims and Orthodox Christians.
The number of divorced people more than trebled, from 9,800 to 35,100, between 1996 and 2002, following the legalization of divorce. The number of separated and divorced people increased from 87,800 in 1996 to 133,800 last year.
Limerick city had the highest level of marital breakdown, at 11.7 percent, with County Cavan at the other end of the scale with 4.9 percent.
While the number of families increased by over 30 percent since 1981, the fastest-growing category were couples without children.
Falling fertility has had a major impact on family size and has seen the average number of children per family decline from 2.2 in 1986 to 1.6 last year.
Cohabiting couples accounted for 8.4 percent of all “families,” compared to 3.9 percent six years earlier. Almost two thirds of these were childless couples.
The number of same-sex cohabiting couples increased from 150 in 1996 to almost 1,300. Two-thirds of these were male couples.
Everyone seems to be flocking to the east coast, with the population of Leinster going over 2 million for the first time. Leinster’s share of the overall population has increased in every census since 1926, while the shares of the other three provinces have declined.
Dublin Fingal had the youngest population, with an average age of 32, followed closely by South Dublin, with an average age of 32.1 years.
Leitrim, with an average age of 38.5, had the oldest population, followed by Roscommon, at 38.
As a consequence of the population getting older, people 65 or older living alone comprised 41 percent (or 113,800) of all people living alone.
A new question in the census found there were nearly 24,000 Travelers and the proportion of young Travelers under 14 was twice as high as the rate for Ireland as a whole.
There has been a decline in the percentage of Irish speakers, though more people said they could speak Irish last year (1.57 million) compared with 1996 (1.43 million).
In percentage terms, the number of native speakers was down from 43.5 percent in 1996 to 42.8 percent last year.
The proportion of Irish speakers declined in all Gaeltacht areas, apart from Meath, between 1996 and 2002. Over a quarter of the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht population speak Irish less frequently than weekly, while 7.4 percent were recorded as never speaking the language.