Correction: Eurostat data on non-EU citizens living illegally in Ireland

Eurostat has corrected inaccurate statistics which originally claimed Ireland had the highest number of non-EU citizens found to be illegally present in any EU country last year.

The statistics reported by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, and reproduced in this newspaper, initially said that Ireland had a 28.9% rate of non-EU citizens found to be here illegally in 2023 per 1,000 Irish inhabitants.

In fact, Ireland has one of the lowest rates in the EU.

The Irish Examiner sought clarity from Eurostat which said the data had a “calculation error” and it apologised for the inconvenience caused.

The correct figure is that Ireland had 0.3% third country-nationals found to be illegally present per thousand persons."

This percentage means Ireland ranks among the lowest, not the highest, in the EU for non-EU citizens illegally living here.

Editor's Note: The original article published here cited inaccurate data published by Eurostat, which has subsequently been corrected. The discrepancy in percentage figures should also have been interrogated during the editing process and we apologise for the error.