Coming home: almost 20,000 Irish people returned before Census

The majority of those came home from the UK, Australia and the US.

FAMILIES IN IRELAND have become all-too familiar with emigration again over the past four years but Census 2011 has some surprising figures.

Some 19,593 Irish people actually returned to Ireland in the 12 months prior to April 2011.

Of those, 7,338 had lived in the UK and 3,921 had been residing in Australia.

Another 1,688 came back from the US. The remainder of the Irish returned from a wide range of countries, including Canada (845), Spain (662) and France (529).

The “where were you a usual resident of one year ago” question allowed for this information to be collected.

The data also showed that 1991 to 2000 were the peak years for Irish-born people to return to Ireland – usually from the UK or the US.

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