European research shows that there are more people leaving Ireland that any other country in the EU.

Not only that but there are twice as many people leaving Ireland as there are leaving Lithuania, who have the second highest rate.
The EU Commission’s statistics office, Eurostat have compiled figures which show Ireland to be at the top of the chart for emigration.

Ireland boasts of the EU’s highest birth rate and lowest death rate currently and as work dries up the number of Irish emigrating is skyrocketing.

urostat calculated that the 27 countries in European Union now have a population of 501.1 million all together. This number is on the up from 2009 when the figure was just 499.7 million. The Irish are doing their part to boost this number with birth rate figures that have not been seen since the 1890s.

In 2009, nine people in every thousand Irish emigrated. This is the exact opposite of the population situation in 2000 when there was a massive inflow of people at 8.4 per thousand.

Last year, 4.6 people in every thousand left Lithuania who came second in the chart. Their figures are just halve of Ireland’s whopping eight out of every thousand.

Economic Social Research Institute economist, Thomas Conefrey told the Irish Times that a significant amount of the emigration reflects non-Irish nationals who are going home as work dries up.

He added ““In terms of labour market mobility, it would be expected to be highest among people who came here to work and who are no longer in employment,” Mr Conefrey said.

“This tendency for the rate of outflow to be highest among non-Irish nationals is backed up by the quarterly national household survey, which measures labour force trends.”