Primary schools now have nearly 2,000 pupils whose first language is not English, a survey by the educational research centre at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra suggests. Nearly two-thirds of them need help to understand and use the English language.
Most of the children are refugees or asylum-seekers. A minority of them have parents who are here as diplomats or in business.
Part of a £3.5 million allocation in the National Development Plan to the refugee language support unit in Trinity College Dublin will go towards helping them to become fluent enough in English to take a full part in classroom activities.
The survey, which was conducted late last year, found that 1,614 pupils in 288 schools were described by principals as non-English speaking. They came from 104 countries.
Since the survey was conducted, the numbers are likely to have risen due to the continuing arrival of asylum-seekers.
The largest group of pupils in the survey, at 145, comes from Nigeria, followed by 111 from Pakistan and 95 from Bosnia-Herzegovina.
A total of 270 non-English-speaking children were from EU countries. The largest number of these were from Germany (77), France (45) and Holland (43). There were no children from either Austria or Luxembourg.
The country of origin of 37 pupils is given as Ireland. It is likely that these children were born in Ireland of non-Irish parents but their mother tongue is that of their parents. It has been found, for example, that children of Vietnamese parents frequently have very little English when they start school, says the report.
The report of the survey suggests that, of the total number of pupils, 1,100 needed help with English.
Vietnamese children topped the list of nationalities with poor English (85 per cent).
More than 70 per cent of children from Russia, Somalia and Romania were rated as having poor English.
A majority of pupils in the survey were in schools in Dublin but some were in Galway (24) and Co Monaghan (20).
In 1996 a study of refugee needs, funded by the Department of Education and Science was carried out by the centre for language and communication studies in Trinity College.
As a result of that survey, the Department adopted a policy to enable the children of refugees and asylum-seekers to become competent enough in English to be able to benefit from the school system.
TCD is involved in programmes to help adult refugees become competent in English. Schoolchildren are helped with their English by visiting teachers who withdraw them from the classroom to give them special tuition.
According to the report, there are five visiting teachers catering for 70 students in 26 schools.
At post-primary level, extra teaching hours are sanctioned for schools to provide tuition for pupils who need help with English.