More than 40,000 Irish people left the country in the year to April, up 45 per cent on the previous 12 months.
Latest migration figures published by the Central Statistics Office today show the number of Irish nationals who left the country during the period was up from 27,700 to 40,200.
Overall emigration was up by 16.9 per cent to 76,400, with Irish nationals making up 53 per cent of that total. This was an increase of 11,100 on the previous 12 months.
Emigration among non-Irish nationals fell for the second year in a row.
Nationals from the ‘EU12’ (the 10 accession states and Bulgaria and Romania) accounted for just under 20 per cent of emigrants.
The number of immigrants also increased over the same 12 month period from 30,800 to 42,300.
The CSO said net outward migration was broadly the same as in the previous 12-month period, at 34,100 and 34,500 respectively. But net outward migration among Irish nationals increased from 14,400 in April 2010 to 23,100 in April 2011.
Over the same period net outward migration of non-Irish nationals nearly halved from 20,200 to 11,000.
Emigration to the UK and countries designated as ‘rest of the world’ showed large increases, while there was a drop in emigration to the EU 12 countries.
Nearly two-thirds of the population is aged 15-64, some 22 per cent is under 15 and the remaining 12 per cent is 65 and older.
The natural increase in the population continued to be “very strong”, the CSO said.
Some 75,100 babies were born in the 12 months to April this year, with 27,400 deaths in the period. This results in a natural increase of 47,700, or just over 1 per cent of the population.
“The combined effect of strong natural increase and negative net migration resulted in a relatively small increase in the overall population of 13,600 bringing the population estimate to 4.48 million in April 2011,” the CSO said.