Official figures show that 2004 was the Year of Immigration, writes Garret FitzGerald
Accession to the EU gave the citizens of the new member-states a right in principle to come to work in any of the original 15 member-states. However, all 13 of these states on the continent sought derogations from this provision for a period of up to seven years.
Britain and Ireland did not seek such a derogation, contenting themselves with requiring entrants from these states seeking work to register for this purpose on arrival, whilst denying them the right to social benefits for the first two years of residence here.
Opponents of the Nice Treaty that made provision for the accession of new members sought to arouse fears of mass unemployment as a result of a flood of workers from Eastern European countries to Britain and Ireland after May 1st last. But both governments, conscious of our countries' need for additional immigrant workers, resisted these alarmist fears, which it is now clear were totally unjustified. Although there has been a substantial inflow of workers from these countries since last May, in fact unemployment has since declined, from 4.6 per cent to 4.3 per cent in November.
We shall have to wait until later this year for official data on the overall inflow of immigration and on the level of employment of immigrants in the 12 months to April 2005. But from data now available, in respect of work permits, together with data on the numbers of workers from Eastern Europe who have registered for work here, we already know that during 2004 almost 64,000 people from outside the old 15-member EU registered to work in Ireland. If we include the 23,000 work permit renewals issued to non-EU workers last year, in all 88,000 people from outside the 15-member EU enjoyed the right to work in Ireland during last year - which was well over twice the equivalent figure for the previous year - 40,000. Almost 60,000 (table left) of these 88,000 were from countries in Eastern Europe that joined the EU on May 1st last, thereby securing the right in principle for their nationals to come to Ireland and Britain, subject only to registering for work.
Some of these workers were seasonal - especially those engaged in horticulture - and some others may have remained for limited periods. But the fact that in 2003 renewals almost equalled the number who had received work permits in the previous year suggests that many are settled here.
It is too soon, however, to assess the extent to which this inflow of workers has accelerated the underlying growth of our labour force. The three months ended August last, - the latest period for which figures are currently available, saw a quarterly increase of only 11,000 in the labour force. It may well be that the main impact of the additional inflow of workers from outside the old 15-member EU will emerge from later figures for the months from September onwards.
In respect of workers from Eastern Europe, Britain has had a similar experience to ours, but relatively speaking on a smaller scale. Between May and September last year 91,000 workers from these Eastern European countries registered for work in Britain - a figure that compares with 36,000 who registered here during those same five months. Given the 15 to 1 ratio between the British and Irish populations, the fact that despite the availability of 600,000 vacancies in Britain three out of ten of these Eastern European workers chose more distant Ireland as their destination is interesting.
Three Eastern European countries contributed four-fifths of our Eastern European immigrants last year. As one might have expected they were the poorest three - Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. These are countries where the average purchasing power of incomes is only about one-third of the Irish level. In the case of the two Baltic states, as much as 1 per cent of their population left for Britain or Ireland last year.
The sudden jump in immigration from Eastern Europe after EU accession in May last was, however, accompanied by a halving of immigration from many other parts of the world, most notably from other Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria and Romania which are still outside the EU, but also from former parts of the Soviet Union, from East and South Asia other than India, and from South Africa and Brazil.
The two accompanying tables set out the main features of the immigration and work permit data currently available. From the second- and third-last lines of the table on right it will be seen that between 2001 and 2003 there has been a quite close correspondence between the total number of non-EU nationals with work-permits and the numbers at work in the March-May period of each of these years.
However quite a number of the Eastern Europeans who registered for work after April may not have been fresh immigrants but may simply have been existing immigrant workers from these countries taking advantage of the new scheme to put their employment here on a firmer basis.
To that extent the actual inflow in 2004 may have been a good deal smaller than the figures in this table might seem to suggest.
It will also be seen from the table (right) that the asylum-seeking element of immigration has declined sharply in the last two years. It now constitutes only 6 per cent of the total inflow of people from outside the 15-member EU.
The present, would, therefore, be a good moment at which to review the ban on asylum-seekers working. This never made much sense and is now frustrating many of those involved as well as imposing a significant unnecessary financial burden on the Exchequer.
Finally, in addition to those people coming here for work, there are other categories coming here, for example students and some dependants of working immigrants.
Details of these immigrants are more difficult to trace, but they may have raised the total level of immigration by a further 10,000 or so.