EU study predicts 6.75m to live here by 2060
'Ageing populations, increasingly dependent on migrants to maintain their size, will be a feature of all EU economies'
Louise Hogan and Sarah Stack
IRELAND'S population will boom to levels not seen since the Great Famine over the next 50 years, it was predicted yesterday.
By the year 2060 there will be 6.75 million people living here. And despite the number of people expected to seek work abroad as a result of the economic downturn, the population is still expected to surge by 53pc.
Official projections by the EU statistics office Eurostat suggest that Ireland will experience one of the strongest growth rates in Europe, alongside Cyprus, Luxembourg, the UK and Sweden.
However, some countries, including Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Poland, will record sharp falls in population.
The projections predict the UK will boast the highest number of residents in Europe at close to 77 million, followed by France on 72 million and Germany on 71 million.
But as the so-called baby boomers of the 1960s get older, it is expected almost one third of the EU's population will be aged 65 or more by 2060. One in 10 of EU citizens will be 80 or older by 2060.
Compared with a ratio of four to one today, there will be only two people of working age for every person aged 65 or more in 2060.
Proportion
"Ireland bucks the trend, but only slightly, with the ratio of working-age Irish people to OAPs going from 16pc now to 43pc in 2060," the Eurostat report states.
Those over the age of 65 currently account for 11pc of Ireland's population, with this proportion expected to rise to 25pc in the next 50 years. Just over one in 30 people in Ireland today are aged over 80, but this figure is expected to rise to one in 10 by 2060.
More than eight million people lived on this island and about 6.5 million people lived in the area that now comprises the Republic of Ireland before the failure of the potato crop during the 1840s, which resulted in widespread emigration and death. The population had halved by 1901, before dropping to an all-time low of 2.82 million in 1961.
According to Census figures the population had risen to 4.23 million by 2006, with EU records showing the figure had jumped further to 4.4 million by the start of this year.
The Republic's population is forecast to rise to 6.05 million by 2035 and 6.75 million by 2060.
Fertility
The EU report is based on the population on January 1 this year and on the assumption that fertility, death rates and net migration in Europe will converge in the long-term.
"However, population predictions are 'what-if' scenarios to give information about the future size and structure of populations based on current trends and need to be treated with caution," the report states.
"But projections of an ageing population, increasingly dep-endent on migrants in order to maintain the size of its working-age population, are a feature of all EU economies."
The population within the EU is expected to increase from the 495 million recorded at the start of the year to a peak of 521 million in 2035 before grad-ually declining to 506 million by 2060.
- Louise Hogan and Sarah Stack
