Ireland's population at 133-year high

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's population climbed to its highest level in over 130 years in April as emigration slowed to a trickle -- reversing more than a century of departures spurred by famine, poverty and unemployment.


The Central Statistics Office estimated on Tuesday that Ireland's total population in April 2004 stood at 4.04 million -- the highest figure since 1871 when the census for that year recorded a population of 4.05 million.


The population increased by 64,900 or 1.6 percent compared with the previous April, the CSO said in its Population and Migration Estimates report.


"The natural increase in the population (i.e. births less deaths) for the period was 33,300 while net immigration contributed 31,600 to the annual increase."


Massive foreign investment on the back of a company-friendly tax regime created an economic boom in the late 1990s and Irish growth is still among the highest in the eurozone, attracting thousands to its shores and encouraging more people to stay.


Immigration, which peaked at 66,900 in the year to April 2002, fell to 50,100 in 2004 but emigration -- at just 18,500 -- was at its lowest level since the CSO series began in 1987.


Up to a million people are thought to have died of starvation during the Irish famine of the late 1840s and a further million subsequently emigrated, mainly to North America.


Emigration continued over the next century and the population had slumped to a low of some 2.8 million in the 1960s -- half what it was 120 years earlier.


CSO said nearly a third of immigrants in 2004 were from countries other than the United States or those in the European Union and just over a third were returning Irish nationals.

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