Parnell Square and Five Million
In 2023, Ireland confronted a revealing contrast: a prosperous, expanding State whose central public question was whether ordinary people could find a secure place within it. On 30 May the Central Statistics Office published the first headline results of Census 2022. The census had counted 5,149,139 people on 3 April 2022, the first population above five million since the nineteenth century. The statistic belonged to the preceding year, but its publication gave 2023 a powerful demographic landmark. Ireland had grown by 387,274 people, or 8.1 per cent, since 2016; net migration accounted for more of that increase than natural change.