The number of Romanians arriving into Ireland has risen dramatically since the beginning of the year, with a total of 3,164 allocated Personal Public Service (PPS) numbers last month.
The influx coincides with Romania's accession to the European Union on January 1st this year. Romanians are restricted from working here unless they have a work visa or are self-employed, although they now have freedom of movement within the EU.
The numbers arriving here represent a dramatic increase over last year when just 813 Romanians were allocated PPS numbers during all of 2006. A total of 591 were allocated PPS numbers in 2005.
The only former EU accession country allocated more PPS numbers than Romania last month was Poland, with 5,756 recipients.
The scale of immigration Ireland experienced from former accession states since 2004 was the main reason the Government opted to place work restrictions on citizens from Romania and Bulgaria, which officially joined the EU yesterday.
The number of Romanians arriving here - about 100 a day - is likely to come as a surprise to authorities here.
It is unclear what proportion of Romanians applying for PPS numbers are legally working here with work permits, self-employed or are seeking work in the informal economy.
Under the habitual residency condition - introduced by the Government to prevent "welfare tourism" - Romanians and other former accession country nationals are unable to access social welfare unless they can prove they are normally resident here, or plan to remain here for a long period of time.
Groups representing Romanians in Ireland, who are seeking an end to work restrictions, estimated last year large numbers of its citizens would come here this year seeking work, despite the range of restrictions.
Nationals from other central and eastern European countries accounted for much smaller numbers of PPS allocations in January this year. Citizens from Lithuania received 980, followed by Slovakia (745), Latvia (456), Hungary (290) and the Czech Republic (266). There is no record of any PPS numbers being allocated to Bulgarians, who joined the EU along with Romania on January 1st.
The overall tally for PPS numbers allocated to nationals from former EU accession states since May 2004 is now more than 315,000. The majority (190,000) have been issued to Poles.
PPS numbers are only an indicator of migration levels and do not show if PPS-holders have since left the country. For example, of the 315,000 people from accession states who received PPS numbers, a significant proportion are likely to have returned home. Some migration experts estimate that only about 90,000 accession state citizens are resident here at present.
The best measure of immigration into Ireland will be contained in census data due to be published in the coming months, which is expected to show that the proportion of foreign nationals has grown to 10 per cent of the population - its highest level to date.
