ALMOST 840,000 adult migrants came to the Republic to take up employment or access public services over a six-year period to 2007, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Only half of these foreign nationals - about 423,000 - were still working here in 2007, the CSO figures show. It isn't known what happened to the rest, but many seem to have left the State, possibly to return home.
The CSO figures are based on personal public service numbers (PPSNs), issued not just to workers but also to homemakers, retired people and students.
While PPSNs issued by the Department of Social and Family Affairs do not indicate employment status, the CSO has combined this information with data from the Revenue Commissioners to build up a picture of migration and employment.
Its figures seem to suggest significant numbers of foreign nationals come here to work for a short period before leaving again. For example, employment among the 83,000 migrants assigned PPSNs in 2002 fell from 59 per cent that year to 33 per cent in 2007. The CSO data shows PPSNs allocated to foreign nationals fell for the first time in three years in 2007.
A PPSN is the State identification number for dealings with a number of public sector bodies.
The fall-off in employment is most apparent among immigrants from the old EU of 15 states. Of the 18,300 adults from the EU15 who arrived in 2002, 70 per cent were working in that year but only 14 per cent in 2007.
For the 10 accession states that joined the EU in 2004, the employment level declines at a much slower rate, indicating that these migrants may be staying longer. Of the 58,000 who entered in 2004, 79 per cent were employed in that year and 59 per cent still in 2007.
Men outnumber women among the migrant population - of the 423,000 foreign nationals assigned PPSNs between 2002 and 2007 still employed here in 2007, 256,000 were male and 167,000 female. The overall number includes 76,000 migrants working in hotels and restaurants, 51,000 in construction and 55,000 in manufacturing.
Workers from the 10 accession states account for 60 per cent of foreign nationals in employment, and 80 per cent in construction.
However, the number of PPSN allocations to foreign nationals fell from a peak of 227,000 in 2006 to 215,000 in 2007, largely because of a drop of 25,000 in those arriving from the accession states.
Poland still provides by far the greatest number of migrants, with 79,700 PPSN allocations in 2007. This was followed by the UK with 22,000, Romania with 14,500 and Lithuania with 11,000. The small Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, which has a population of just 1.25 million, accounted for 4,000 PPSN allocations in 2006 and 2007.
