Revealed: There has been a large rise in dual Irish citizenship holders - CSO

Huge increase since the 2011 Census

Dual Irish citizenship is on the rise

The latest Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures from last year's Census show that while the number of non-Irish nationals living in Ireland has dipped slightly since 2011, the number of people holding dual Irish citizenship is up by 87.4 per cent.

CSO figures published today reveal that the number of non-nationals living in Ireland now stands at 535,475, a 1.6pc decrease on the 2011 Census figure of 544,357.

However, the number of people holding dual citizenship (Ireland and another country) now stands at 104,784, an increase of 87.4pc over five years.

The largest portion of this section of the population were dual Irish-American nationals (17,552), followed closely by Irish-UK nationals (15,428) with Irish-Polish accounting for 9,273.

Just over 60pc (66,440 people) who had dual nationality were born outside Ireland.

The Migration and Diversity update from Census 2016 also revealed that 122,515 Polish nationals live in Ireland, making them the largest group of non-nationals in the country.

Second was the UK with 103,113 people while there were 36,552 Lithuanians living in Ireland at the time of the Census.

Ten countries - America, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Spain and the UK – accounted for 73.6 per cent of non nationals.

However, the Census reveals that people from 200 different nations lived in Ireland in April 2016.

The report from the CSO also shows that Dublin city (91,876), Fingal (46,909) and Cork County (42,002) had the largest number of non-nationals residents.

Sligo (5,892) and Leitrim (3,526) had the lowest.

Galway had the highest percentage of non-national residents at 18.6pc, just ahead of Dublin city where the figure stood at just over 17pc.

Ballyhaunis in Mayo was the town with the highest percentage of non-nationals, with 941 people making up 39.5 pc of its total population.

And the non-Irish population is slightly younger than the Irish nationals.

The average age of an Irish national is up a year, to 37.7 while the average age of non-nationals is up 2.2 years to 34.8.

The numbers of non-nationals in work was also revealed with their unemployment rate standing at 15.4 per cent, just slightly ahead of the Irish population figure of 12.6 per cent.