The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman has today published a report on the Roma community in Ireland.
The Report says that data available from the most recent Census of Population (2022), in which Roma was included as a separate category on the question of ethnicity for the first time, found that there are 16,059 Roma living in Ireland.
It was further noted that with reference to citizenship, the majority of Roma in Ireland define their citizenship as Irish (approximately 27.6%) while only 22% of Roma in Ireland define themselves as citizens of Romania. Italy is the next most common place for the Roma community to state they hold citizenship for, with slightly under 10% of the community stating such in the 2022 Census. 161 persons from the Roma community, or around 1%, stated that they had no citizenship.
The Report found that there was a relatively even split of male and female Roma living in Ireland, with the majority being between 35 and 39 years of age. There was a very small number of Roma over the age of 85 living in Ireland.
Also of note is that despite repeated references to protecting ethnic minority groups such as the Roma and Traveller populations during recent debates on the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act 2024 that came into force on the 31 December, there is not a single reference to ‘hate’ ‘hate crime’ ‘hate offences’ in the Report.
Speaking following the signing of the commencement order for the Act, Minister McEntee said:
“This legislation will protect people targeted because of certain identity characteristics namely – race; colour; nationality; religion; national or ethnic origin; descent; disability; gender; sex characteristics and sexual orientation. The Act creates new, aggravated forms of certain existing offences – that is, hate crimes – where they are aggravated by hatred of one or more of these protected characteristics.”
In a statement issued by Minister O’Gorman’s Department on the Report, some key findings from the were identified, including:
The majority of Roma living in Ireland are located in Dublin (6,144) and Cork (1,251). There are a smaller number of Roma living in each of the other 24 counties. The overall majority of Roma living in Ireland are of good health, matching the same trend as the general population. 87% of Roma in Ireland noted their health as being good or very good. In comparison, 83% of the general population of Ireland noted their health as being good or very good.
In addition, the majority of Roma in Ireland have completed upper secondary education. Roma youth have a rate of transfer from primary to post-primary education of 89%, which is lower than the general population transfer rate of 96%, but higher than the transfer rate of the Traveller community of 83%.
The majority of the Roma population over the age of 15 years old are persons at work, accounting for 61% of the population in this age range. Just under 10% of the Roma population over the age of 15 look after the home/family.
In terms of employability, the Report noted that 63% of those surveyed believe that identifying as a member of the Roma community would put a person at a disadvantage when being hired for a role.
The Roma community was the second highest ethnic group that those surveyed believe would face disadvantage when being hired for a role (members of the Traveller community was the highest ethnic group, with 67% of those surveyed believing identifying as a member of the travelling community would put a person at a disadvantage).