The Asian population is the fastest growing ethic group in Ireland, figures

The Asian population is the fastest growing ethic group in Ireland, figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) reveal.

Those of “any other Asian background” were found to be the fastest growing ethnic grouping since 2006, with an annual growth of 13.3 per cent.

This far outweighed overall population growth, which was just 1.6 per cent annually.

Having first been added to the last census in 2006, questions related to ethnicity and cultural background were again asked last year.

Those of Irish ethnicity grew by one per cent, while the increase of those from “any other white background” increased by 7.4 per cent annually.

The classification of “any other Asian background” was found to have just under half (48.8 per cent) belong to professional or managerial and technical social classes.

Over one-third of the Irish ethnic group (36.6 per cent) are in either “professional workers” or “managerial and technical” classes. Only 2.9 per cent of Irish Travellers, however, occupy these top two positions.

Over 30 per cent of both Africans and Chinese occupy the top three social classes, which also includes the “non-manual” social class.

There are twice as many Chinese in the “skilled manual” category as there are Africans.

Three out of five people of Chinese ethnicity were born in China, with 8.1 per cent born in Malaysia and 7.8 per cent born in Hong Kong.

The “any other Asian background” group had 23.9 per cent born in India, 19.1 per cent born in the Philippines and 11.1 per cent born in Pakistan.