{"id":26065,"date":"2025-09-17T01:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T01:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/26065\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T01:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T01:07:08","slug":"govt-report-population-to-be-increasingly-born-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/26065\/","title":{"rendered":"Govt report: population to be increasingly born abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week the Department of Finance published a document entitled Future Forty<\/a> which contains an analysis of likely demographic trends over the next four decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These trends have been identified by myself and others going back quite a few years when the State was clearly under-estimating the level of inward migration or downplaying it \u2013 a factor which as has been pointed out made nonsense of much of their own \u2018planning\u2019 with regards to housing and other provisions.<\/p>\n

Now it appears that they are owning the process and there is an acceptance \u2013 unique I think for any developed western state that the \u201cindigenous population\u201d \u2013 as Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan recently described us recently when asked about the flying of flags \u2013 is inexorably in decline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is worth looking behind the Government press release to see what the rationale for such acceptance is: that we are aging as a people and need lots of younger immigrants to pay our pensions. This contradicts the United Nations own view of migration and demographic change in a 2000 report entitled \u2013 in case you missed the point \u2013 Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Aging Populations?<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The UN report concluded that \u201cimmigration is not a realistic solution to demographic ageing.\u201d The main and obvious reason for that is because \u201cimmigrants adopt the low fertility of a host population.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rather, the government\u2019s rationale is about sustaining a labour force which mostly works and will increasingly work for overseas companies.\u00a0 The pensions thing is a bit of a gas illumined red herring, if you ask me.<\/p>\n

For example, in the third paragraph of the introduction to the Department of Finance report it is declared that: \u201cImmigration has the potential to offset some of these demographic challenges by boosting the working-age population and filling critical skills gaps. In turn, this can contribute to improved economic growth, innovation and productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even more starkly the report goes on to state that: \u201cMigration appears to be the sole driver of labour force growth in the long run. Ensuring provision of services and infrastructure keeps pace with demographic trends is essential for maintaining Ireland\u2019s appeal as a destination for highly skilled international talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

So now we know where we stand. The Irish state is no more than a resource, a destination, for people who wish to make money here, and most of them \u2013 and in future the overwhelming number of their employees as we are told by the Department of Finance \u2013 are overseas corporations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report also makes clear that it will be a requirement \u201cto prepare contingency plans for a high-case migration scenario to avoid potential infrastructure bottlenecks constraining growth. These plans should include details on when to activate specific actions to respond to higher levels of migration and boost infrastructure capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Effectively then the Irish State plan is no more than a function of the labour demands of mostly overseas corporations.\u00a0 This even trumps another Golden Calf of our administrative elite: Climate Change.<\/p>\n

For we are told that: \u201cTargets under Ireland\u2019s Climate Action Plan, for example, have created unprecedented demand for roles in construction, engineering and retrofitting.\u201d\u00a0 Whatever happened to the \u2018Carbon Footprint\u2019 and that it would be best if people travelled as little as possible? Do immigrants not use electricity and transport and plastic and breathe?\u00a0 Not to mention that the \u201cunprecedented demand\u201d for everything is inextricably linked to immigration numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report makes no estimate of what proportion of the population of the state will have been born overseas by 2065 but recent, current and future trends \u2013 now accepted by the State \u2013 is that over 90% of population growth will be made up of immigrants.\u00a0 Given that the current proportion of persons born overseas is close to a quarter, it is reasonable to predict that this will be approaching half within 40 years.<\/p>\n

The report reminds us that the current and likely future birth rate is below replacement. However, that does not tell us the full story.\u00a0 Statistics on births show not only that the overall number of births has fallen sharply since 2000 but that the number, and proportion, of births to Irish mothers has fallen even more sharply.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the key factors in this has been the net migration of younger Irish people. The Department report shows that not only has \u201cnet migration of Irish nationals \u2026 once again turned negative\u201d but that 70,000 more Irish people have left the State since 2006 than have returned (Figure 17, p29.)\u00a0 According to the report emigration is \u201cremaining stubbornly high despite an improving economic landscape.\u201d \u00a0 Which begs the question for whose benefit is the \u201cimproving economic landscape?\u201d<\/p>\n

The impact of the emigration of young Irish people can be seen starkly in the birth statistics. Between 2011 and the first quarter of 2025 there have been 887,748 births registered within the state. Of that number, 76.6% were born to Irish mothers, defined as persons who have Irish citizenship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That proportion has fallen steeply over that period: From 77% in 2011 to 71% in the first quarter of 2025. If we take the most recent figures and make the same calculation<\/a> based on the difference between the number of people actually born overseas and the number of people born overseas who have subsequently acquired Irish citizenship the proportion of births to mothers who were born overseas must now be close to 40% of all births.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Monday another 6,000 people from 138 countries \u201cchoose to be Irish\u201d according to Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe whose Department put together the report on where all of this is going.\u00a0 RT\u00c9<\/a> reported that one of the \u2018New Irish\u2019 told them that \u201cNow I can go anywhere in the Schengen area, any of the European countries, so that feels very good.\u201d The very definition of Irishness is it not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week the Department of Finance published a document entitled Future Forty which contains an analysis of likely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,5858,61,60,21875,21876],"class_list":{"0":"post-26065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-demographics","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-population-numbers","13":"tag-un-report"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}