Abstract

About 70,000 immigrants entered the Rebublic of Ireland in the twelve months before this conference at the end of 2005, and the Central Statistics Office estimates that there will be a need for approximately 30,000 per annum for the next ten years. Apart from the quite sudden social consequences of a multi-cultural society in-the-making in Ireland, one of the most noteworthy aspects of this immigration, in a broader historical context, is that it is the first significant in-migration to Ireland for three or four centuries. The last comparatively large-scale immigration occurred in the seventeenth century, during the last half of which up to 100,000 Scots came into Ireland.