Sunday, July 29, 2007

The Changing Face Of Ireland

Ireland is now a multicultural society
Foreign nationals accounted for more than 10% of the population in Ireland, according to the latest Census figures .
More than 25% of all black people living in Ireland were born here.
The Census also reveals that the Asian population in Ireland has risen to 52,345. Almost 60% of those live in Dublin. There were 419,733 non-Irish people surveyed out of a population of 4,172,013.
The highest proportion of non-Irish nationals came from the UK at 112,548, with the next highest being the Polish community with 63,276 and 46,952 people describing themselves as Asian, with people from Africa accounting for 35,326.
The Polish language- closely followed by Chinese-is one of the most widely-spoken languages in Ireland after English and Irish: There are over 63,000 Poles resident in Ireland according to the 2006 census
The main religions are Catholicism (86.8%) Anglicanism (3%) Moslem (0.8%) Christians Unspecified (0.7%) Orthodox (0.5%) Methodist (0.3%).
Clearly Irish politicians and planners face huge challenges to integrate the immigrant population and to prevent the development of ghettoes. We can learn from mistakes made in the UK and France.

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