Irish-born population in England and Wales falls by fifth in a decade

The Irish-born population in England and Wales fell by a fifth over the last decade, according to the latest British census data.

The United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics said those who listed Ireland as their country of birth declined from 407,000 in 2011 to 325,000 in 2021, a decrease of 20 per cent in the decade.

“This follows a long-term trend since it peaked in the 1961 census,” the office said.

Irish passports were the fifth-most common non-UK passport held by usual residents in England and Wales in 2021, down from the second-most common held a decade earlier.

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The census showed there were 364,726 Irish passport holders last year, down from 372,389 in 2011. Polish, Romanian, Indian and Italian passports were the four most common passports.

There were 760,000 Polish passport holders, 550,000 Romanian passport holders, 369,224 Indian passport holders and 368,000 Italian passport holders in England and Wales last year.

Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said the decline in the number of Irish-born people in England and Wales was part of a longer-term trend due to the deaths of elderly Irish people who migrated to the United Kingdom several decades ago.

“Ireland is still in the top 10 countries of birth for people in the UK but it is no longer as important as it once was if you look at arrivals in a given year,” she said.

“Partly what we are seeing is the fact that the number of Irish migrants in the UK is a legacy of much higher migration over the past 70 years and a lot of those people are dying.”

The latest census data shows that almost one in 10 of the population of England and Wales, or 5.9 million usual residents, held a non-UK passport. Overall, one in six residents of England and Wales were born outside the United Kingdom.

The number of people in England and Wales born outside the United Kingdom rose by 2.5 million since 2011, reaching 10 million foreign-born people in 2011, or 17 per cent of a 59.5 million population.

The new data shows that most of the increase in residents born outside the United Kingdom were arrivals from Romania after working restrictions were lifted in 2014, followed by India and Poland.

India remained the most common country of birth outside the United Kingdom in 2021 with 920,000 people or 1.5 per cent of usual residents born there.

The number of people born in Romania grew by 576 per cent over the decade, rising from 80,000 in 2011 to 539,000 in 2021.

London has the largest proportion of people born outside the United Kingdom. More than four in 10 usual residents in London were not born in the United Kingdom, and more than one in five had a non-UK passport.