On 1 January 2024, foreign citizens and stateless people made up 15.3%^* of the people living in Ireland, against 9.6%^* across the EU — the 6th highest share of the 27 EU states that publish it.

The largest single foreign citizenship among residents is Poland: 103,748 people on 1 January 2025.

In 2024, 127,664 people moved to Ireland and 58,077 left: a difference of 69,587^*, more arrivals than departures.

Citizens and foreigners

Residents of Ireland on 1 January 2024, by the citizenship they hold. Every line is a separate figure Eurostat publishes; the site adds none of them together.

Residents of Ireland by citizenship, 1 January 2024
Citizenship	People	Share of residents
All residents	5,351,681	—
Foreign citizens and stateless peopleOne group Eurostat publishes, shown beside the lines below	818,556	15.3%^*
Citizens of Ireland	4,533,125	84.7%^*
Citizens of other EU countries	357,849	6.7%^*
Citizens of countries outside the EU	459,886	8.6%^*
Stateless people	821	0.02%^*
Citizenship not stated	0	0.00%^*

Against the other EU states

Foreign citizens and stateless people as a share of residents on 1 January 2024, for the states ranked next to Ireland. Only states that publish both figures that year are ranked.

Foreign-citizen share, Ireland and the states ranked next to it, 1 January 2024
Rank	Country	Foreign citizens and stateless people, share of residents
4	Austria	19.5%^*
5	Estonia	17.9%^*
6	Ireland	15.3%^*
7	Germany	14.5%^*
8	Belgium	13.8%^*
—	European Union (27, from 2020) (reference, not ranked)	9.6%^*

Largest foreign citizenships

Residents of Ireland by individual citizenship on 1 January 2025, the ten largest of the 197 citizenships Eurostat publishes. This is the citizenship people hold, not where they were born and not their ethnicity.

Ten largest foreign citizenships among residents of Ireland, 1 January 2025
Rank	Citizenship	People	Share of residents
1	Poland	103,748	1.91%^*
2	United Kingdom	91,315	1.68%^*
3	Ukraine	86,521	1.59%^*
4	India	70,011	1.29%^*
5	Romania	47,979	0.88%^*
6	Brazil	41,529	0.76%^*
7	Lithuania	34,711	0.64%^*
8	Italy	24,988	0.46%^*
9	Spain	23,955	0.44%^*
10	United States	20,556	0.38%^*

Country of birth

Residents of Ireland by where they were born, on 1 January 2025. This is a different question from citizenship: someone born abroad may hold Ireland's citizenship, and someone born in Ireland may not.

Residents of Ireland by country of birth, 1 January 2025
Country of birth	People	Share of residents
All residents	5,440,278	—
Born in Ireland	4,173,134	76.7%^*
Born in another country	1,267,144	23.3%^*
Born in another EU country	365,376	6.7%^*
Born outside the EU	901,768	16.6%^*
Country of birth not stated	0	0.00%^*

Arrivals and departures

People who moved to or left Ireland during each calendar year, as reported to Eurostat. Arrivals and departures are separate published figures; the difference is the site's subtraction of the two for the same year.

Arrivals, departures and their difference, Ireland, 2024 and earlier years
Year	Arrived	Left	Arrived minus left
2024	127,664	58,077	69,587^*
2023	135,617	75,020	60,597^*
2022	157,537	61,133	96,404^*
2021	83,770	53,673	30,097^*
2020	81,918	51,313	30,605^*
2019	96,321	51,410	44,911^*

By citizenship, 2024

Arrivals and departures by the citizenship of the person moving. Each line is a separate published figure; none is added to another.

Arrivals and departures by citizenship, Ireland, 2024
Citizenship	Arrived	Left
Citizens of Ireland	33,788	28,768
Citizens of other EU countries	18,971	8,856
Citizens of countries outside the EU	74,463	20,389
Stateless people	0	64
Citizenship not stated	442	0

How to read these figures

Citizenship is the legal bond between a person and a state. Country of birth is where a person was born. They are different facts and different tables, and neither records ethnicity, origin or descent.
Residents counted at 1 January are a stock; arrivals and departures are events during a calendar year. A flow is never a change in a stock, and the two are not divided by each other here.
Eurostat takes each country’s own statistics. Countries differ in who counts as an arrival or a resident, so comparisons between countries are approximate.

Cyprus, covered in full

Cyprus is the one country this site covers in full, down to its districts. Its immigration page is the deepest example of what a country page can hold.

Keep reading

Modification notice and disclaimer

The counts on this page are published by Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Union) and are reproduced unchanged. Humanity Observatory has additionally derived the following from them:

A share of residents, computed by dividing one published count by another from the same table, country and date (for example foreign citizens by all residents).
A country's rank among the EU states for its foreign-citizen share, computed by sorting the published figures of the states that publish both counts for the year.
The difference between published immigration and published emigration for the same country and year (arrivals minus departures). It is a subtraction of two published figures, not a net-migration figure published by Eurostat.
The ten largest individual citizenships, selected by sorting the published figures for the latest year in which most countries are published.

Source: Eurostat. Reuse terms.

^* Calculated by Humanity Observatory from published figures.

Where these numbers come from → Compare the foreign-citizen share across countries →