Polish are our strongest immigrant community

By BRIAN MOORE

That’s according to the latest data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) which also reveals that Dunmanway has just 152 immigrants living there.

In all there are almost 8,000 non-Irish nationals resident in nine of the West Cork towns listed by the CSO from Census 2016. However, the numbers of non-Irish nationals living and working in rural areas of West Cork has not yet been released by the CSO.    

The data shows that the Polish population has the highest number of immigrants, at almost 3,000.

UK nationals are the next on the list, with 1,416 people resident from Carrigaline to Castletownbere. 

Apart from Carrigaline, Kinsale has the largest number (246) of UK nationals living in and around the town.

Bandon is home to just under 1,600 immigrants while Clonakilty has 832 non-Irish residents.

In Skibbereen there are 641 non-Irish residents, the majority of these are from Lithuania (144) while in contrast just seven Lithuanians live in Macroom.

There are no Italians living in Bantry, although the town, along with Clonakilty, has the highest population of immigrants from Asia.

Bandon has the highest number of people from Romania (106) – almost four times the number living in Carrigaline. Kinsale is very popular with people from France (35) Germany (27), Italy (25), Spain (31) and Lithuania (85), while only one person from Africa is recorded as living in Dunmanway.

In total, there are just over half-a-million non-Irish nationals living in Ireland. 

This figure represents a  drop of 1.6% since April 2011.