On Wednesday I looked at a statistical study which strongly indicated that the Central Statistics Office (CSO) had underestimated and under-enumerated the population of the Irish state up to Census 2016 by hundreds of thousands.
I intend to present some more detailed research based on the issuing of new Personal Public Service (PPS) numbers since 2017 compared to the information that was collected by Census 2022. With regard to the Census itself, I had asked the CSO for figures on the numbers of forms distributed to private household and the numbers of forms which were not returned.
I was informed that of the 1,770,138 forms that had been distributed prior to the night of the Census on April 3, 2022 that “forms were not collected from 81,275 households.” That is quite a substantial number, equating to 4.59% of the number of forms distributed.
The average size per household was 2.74 persons so theoretically there are perhaps 222,693 persons unaccounted for in the state. That is just a guesstimate on my part but given that the CSO had to revise it estimates after 2016 and given all the other opaque corners of Irish demographics I would suggest that such a figure represents a rough guide to the discrepancies, and most likely on the lower end according to the analysis by Alan McSweeney which we have discussed.
The lack of definite evidence has led to much speculation, something I avoid as it is well to stick to available statistics. On this occasion, however, and by way of introduction to the more detailed analysis I will briefly indulge some speculation by a respected economist regarding the mysteries of Irish demographics.
In March this year, Dan O’Brien of the Institute of International and European Affairs claimed that 250,000 people had come into the state from abroad in 2022 alone. There was little of the expected outraged reaction which suggests that if O’Brien did not have fully audited figures to back his contention, that those with an interest in poo poohing such “dog whistles” knew better than to contest them. So, is there in fact statistical back up for O’Brien’s claim for 2022 alone?
Not according to the CSO which recorded that in the 12 months between April 2022 and April 2023 that 141,600 persons had come to live in the state. Of that number 29,600 were Irish people returning home so their estimate regarding the number of non-Irish people coming here was approximately half that claimed by O’Brien.
What do the official statistics tell us? According to a Dáil response to a PQ from Colm Burke TD by Minister for Social Protection, Heather Humphreys, there had been a total of 305,889 PPS numbers issued between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022. Of that number just 69,070 had been issued to Irish born people.
Two things jump out at us from this. Firstly, that the number of Irish people issued with a new PPS number – and the vast bulk of that was made up of the 56,954 new born children issued with a PPS number (and a significant proportion of them were children of non-Irish parents) – accounted for just 22.58% of the issues.
The second part to be noted is that if you subtract the number of PPS issues to Irish people then you are left with a total of 236,819 which were issued to persons who had been born outside of the state and in the vast majority of cases had presumably come to live here within the previous days, weeks and months before they were issued with a PPS number.
So, it would seem that we have solved the mystery of where Dan O’Brien came up with his “quarter of a million” people moving to Ireland from overseas in 2022. How then does that compare to other official statistics and how could it explain the huge gap between those and the population and migration statistics published by the CSO?
The EU itself appears to be sceptical regarding the official accounting for immigration here. That is evident from the above table which of the 31 EU and EEA states for which it quotes statistics on the issuing of first time permits in 2022, the Irish state is uniquely awarded a (u) signifying “low reliability.” Italy was given a (b) for a break in time series.
Of the 236,819 persons from overseas issued with PPS numbers, the state’s own other statistics would show that 68,884 were Ukrainians who arrived here under Temporary Protection. 39,955 were persons from outside of the EU/EEA who had been issued with work permits. 13,651 were persons who had arrived to apply for International Protection.
77,957 were from current or former EU (UK) states in Ireland for work, education or other reasons. The EU also gave a figure of 41,506 for persons issued with a permit for “education reasons.” That latter figure also comes with a “low reliability” warning and includes EU/EEA students here for longer than three months. The Irish Universities Association mentions a total of “over 30,000” on all manner of courses not just third level.
That figure is well off the EU figure it might be noted but let us take 30,000 as the figure for the number of students here with permits as it might be close enough to account for the cross over with PPS numbers issued to all EU citizens. The total of all the above categories comes to 230,447 which is remarkably close indeed to the 236,819 persons from overseas who were issued with a PPS number in 2022.
There are unexplained gaps, for example there is little scope left for persons who came here as the family and dependents of people issued with work permits. Nonetheless, my analysis does confirm both that Dan O’Brien was correct in his overall estimate, and that the CSO is grossly under-estimating the numbers of people coming to live in the Irish state from overseas.
I will be applying some of the criteria used by Alan McSweeney in the next piece which will provide an updated estimate of both the extent of the CSO miscalculation since McSweeney’s 2019 paper and how that suggests that the official population estimate is even higher than the hundred of thousands gap identified up to 2016.