Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Common Travel Area, what is the estimated number of (1) UK citizens in the Republic of Ireland, and (2) Irish citizens in Great Britain.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon. Member's Parliamentary Question of 25 January is attached.

The Rt Hon the Lord of Kilclooney
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW

1 February 2023

Dear Lord Kilclooney,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking further to the Common Travel Area, what is the estimated number of (1) UK citizens in the Republic of Ireland, and (2) Irish citizens in Great Britain (HL5084).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) does not produce estimates of the number of UK citizens living in Ireland. That country’s Central Statistics Office estimated that 103,113 UK citizens were living in Ireland in April 2016 (1). Population by nationality estimates based on the Annual Population Survey (APS) show that there were an estimated 330,000 Irish nationals resident in Great Britain in June 2021 (2).

The 2021 Census for England and Wales and the corresponding Census for Scotland, which due to the Covid pandemic was delayed until 2022, asked respondents about passports held which can be used as some proxy for citizenship. The relevant Census figures have not yet been published, though the first release of data on this topic for England and Wales showed that an estimated 364,726 residents of these countries held an Irish passport but not a UK passport (3).

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

1 https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpnin/cpnin/uk/

2 Table 2.4, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/datasets/populationoftheunitedkingdombycountryofbirthandnationality
Note that data from this source below UK, EU and non-EU level should be treated with caution and not be compared with previous years due to the introduction of a new weighting methodology to reflect the change in survey operations during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. These statistics were discontinued in October 2022

3 Table TS005, https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/sources/census_2021_ts