Ireland Country Overview
Where is Ireland located? Ireland, also often called “Green Island”, is the third largest island in Europe and is located in the Atlantic. On the time zone map, which divides the world into time zones along lines of longitude, Ireland is in a region that does not deviate from world clock time. However, there is a time difference in the summer months. Then the regional time in Ireland is one hour ahead of the world clock. (UTC+1).
Population Distribution
As of 2023, the latest population of Ireland is 5,176,569, based on our calculation of the current data from UN (United Nations).
| Total population | 5,176,569 |
| Population growth rate | 1.04% |
| Birth rate | 14.10 births per 1,000 people |
| Life expectancy | |
| Overall life expectancy | 80.44 years |
| Men life expectancy | 78.18 years |
| Women life expectancy | 82.83 years |
| Age structure | |
| 0-14 years | 21.37% |
| 15-64 years | 65.31% |
| 65 years and above | 13.32% |
| Median age | 36.10 years |
| Gender ratio (Male to Female) | 1.00 |
| Population density | 73.66 residents per km² |
| Urbanization | 59.90% |
| Ethnicities | |
| 84.5% Irish; Proportion of foreigners 2015: 11.9% | |
| Religions | |
| Catholics (Roman Catholic) 91.3%, Anglicans (Church of Ireland) 2.8%; Others 5.9% | |
| Human Development Index (HDI) | 0.942 |
| HDI ranking | 3rd out of 194 |
People in Ireland
There are 4.9 million Irish people in Ireland. Each woman has an average of 1.9 children. Ireland’s population is growing due to a surplus of births, but also due to immigration.
63 percent of the Irish live in a city, 37 percent in the country. The largest city is Dublin with 550,000 residents. Cork, Galway and Limerick are the next largest cities. The average age is 37.8 years – this is much less than, for example, in Germany (47.8 years). Life expectancy is 83.7 years for women and 78.9 years for men.
84 percent of the Irish are Catholics. Ireland is traditionally a Catholic country. Saint Patrick is considered the national saint. 2.8 percent are Anglicans. 1.1 percent are Muslim.
There are more redheads in Ireland than in many other countries (only Scotland has more). Overall, ten percent of the population are red-haired.
Languages in Ireland
Most Irish speak English. But now there are more and more Irish who speak Irish. The Irish language is usually referred to as Gaelic in German, but this is not quite correct, because there are three Gaelic languages (in addition to Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, which is spoken on the Isle of Man). English and Irish are also the two official languages of Ireland.
There are regions in Ireland where more people speak Irish as a first language than English. These regions are called Gaeltacht. They are mostly on the west coast. Below is a map with the Gaeltachtaí (that’s what they are called in the plural). But Irish is also very important in the rest of the country and is often spoken as a second language. Irish is also taught in the school from the start. There are also schools that teach entirely in Irish.