The economy cannot survive without migration, so the Government must use the welfare state to insulate the poorest against far-right narratives
Ireland needs an increased flow of migrants to sustain the economy in the coming years.
However, the State needs to be far more progressive as a welfare state if it is to prevent the continuing rise of anti-immigrant and racist sentiment, where vulnerable and deprived people are having their fears hijacked by the hard-right.
The CSO published population and labour-force projections last year, starting with Census 2022 up to 2057. In order to keep the population from falling, on average 2.2 children need to be born per woman each year. This total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.2 is what’s need to keep the population replacing itself — known as the replacement rate.
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, this rate stood at close to four, meaning that a typical Irish family had four children. It stayed up at 2.5 until the late 1980s, but by 1990, it had fallen to 2.12, meaning that, in the absence of net inward migration (which did happen, and which fuelled the high-growth Irish economy for most of the time since then), the population would have started to fall.
As of Census 2022, the TFR has dropped sharply to 1.55, and is projected by the CSO to drop to as low as 1.3 over the next 33 years. The high fertility rates in the 30 years from 1960 to 1990 meant that Ireland had a large young working population from the late 1970s. But these generations have started to reach retirement age, while we lost a large number of non-returning Irish emigrants in the 1980s.
So, in the coming 30 years or so, the previously large young working age Irish population will get old and very old. There were 780,000 people over 65 in Ireland in 2022.
Continue @ Irish Examiner.
The CSO published population and labour-force projections last year, starting with Census 2022 up to 2057. In order to keep the population from falling, on average 2.2 children need to be born per woman each year. This total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.2 is what’s need to keep the population replacing itself — known as the replacement rate.
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, this rate stood at close to four, meaning that a typical Irish family had four children. It stayed up at 2.5 until the late 1980s, but by 1990, it had fallen to 2.12, meaning that, in the absence of net inward migration (which did happen, and which fuelled the high-growth Irish economy for most of the time since then), the population would have started to fall.
As of Census 2022, the TFR has dropped sharply to 1.55, and is projected by the CSO to drop to as low as 1.3 over the next 33 years. The high fertility rates in the 30 years from 1960 to 1990 meant that Ireland had a large young working population from the late 1970s. But these generations have started to reach retirement age, while we lost a large number of non-returning Irish emigrants in the 1980s.
So, in the coming 30 years or so, the previously large young working age Irish population will get old and very old. There were 780,000 people over 65 in Ireland in 2022.
Continue @ Irish Examiner.
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