The population of the Republic of Ireland reached 5.33 million in 2022

And we still wouldn't be watching us at the Euros right now 🤣

in all seriousness crazy to think we could be a population of 40m given our size but probably not far off the mark considering the Netherlands little over a 3rd the size is 17m + right now

We have the benefit of having a moderately good economy the last few years. If we were hit with a major recession, a lot of these people could leave including the native Irish.

We were hit with the mother of all recessions in 2008, yet here we are.

It's government inaction which will cause an exodus, if anything.

Abject dereliction of duty to look beyond the next election. We've had piss all hospitals, schools, (yes) prisons, public transport rail/tram, scrapped council social housing departments or anything needed for a massively growing population. We were under-serviced before the growth and it's only getting worse.

A primary reason for population growth is the huge drop off in net emigration.

You have a natural increase of 20,000 a year (35k deaths, 55k births)

Returning Irish immigrant is circa 30,000 whilst Irish people emigrating is running at similar number. Mostly these are emigrating for short periods of up to 5 years. In the 80's there was net emigration of over 500,000 and a similar figure for 2008-2015.

But once the economic growth started to take hold from 2016 emigration from Ireland dropped dramatically and immigration both of returning Irish people and non Irish people brought over / attracted by the plentiful jobs and good salaries and massive growth in tech and pharma saw the start of a sustained growth in population.

And that in itself created further economic growth in every sector of the economy so that anyone who has the ability to work can get a job.

Imagine telling that to someone leaving school in the mid 80's - you'd be called a total dreamer

In saying this, there are still over 1m Irish born people living outside Ireland - add their children and you have a figure approach 2m+ 1st gen Irish people outside Ireland

Not a bit of it- 500k adults still living at home and tent cities popping up anywhere unfenced in Dublin. Keep em coming! ---

Over 500,000 adults in Ireland are living with their parents, according to census data released by the Central Statistics Office today.

This is a 14% increase over previous census data gathered in 2016.

One thing I do wonder however here is whether having a larger population also provides greater incentive and "critical mass" to have more extensive Seems to me that part of the infrastructural problem in Ireland transport-wise has been that population sizes don't seem to offer the financial return to have a really high quality all-island public transport system (with acknowledgement that partition hasn't exactly helped either for Donegal and better links to Belfast, Derry etc.).

What we have seen instead is investment in the motorways and better options for road users. Not a bad thing at all, but if a bigger population also meant helping to sustain better rail networks etc there might be an environmental benefit there too.

A pyramid scheme, what could go wrong…

Why is why it is a failure of government. If market forces do not exist, where social forces do, then the government needs to step in and provide the service.

It's the same with housing.

ah to be fair, its a bit more complicated than just capitalism, but it is playing a part….

It's a big part of the requirement of constant growth

It means it's full if we've no where to put them, what's your definition of full

Is Ireland full? no

Hopefully it stays like that. England is massively overpopulated. A life spent in traffic and queues isn't anything to aspire to. Not to mention all the social issues that has gone along with that overpopulation.

It means we are full, until such a time as we have more accommodation.

This is not a difficult concept to get a your head around. Primary school children could understand that when you do not have space for something, you are full