"[FONT=Arial, Verdana, Arial]One million immigrants to fuel boom for 15 years[/FONT]Report predicts 5m population,6pc annual growth and 3m cars
Brendan Keenan
Group Business Editor
A MILLION immigrants over the next 15 years could swell the population to more than five million by 2020 and keep the economy and the housing market booming.
The foreign-born population is probably at 400,000 already, and makes up one in eight of the workforce.
In a major new long-term forecast, NCB Stockbrokers say the fastest-growing sectors of the economy will be the savings industry, hotels and restaurants, cars and computers as Ireland's baby boomers reach prime earning and spending age from now to 2020.
The optimistic outlook emerges from a new analysis of the population on which NCB's economists worked with the Central Statistics Office.
Among the findings are:
The population will grow by almost a third and immigrants could make up one in five of residents by 2020.
The number of cars on the road will almost double to 3m. An extra 700,000 dwellings will be needed to house the expanding population of working age.
The Irish economy will far outstrip the rest of the EU, with the potential to grow by more than 5pc a year over the period.
"Ireland's labour force structure is radically different from the rest of the EU," said NCB chief economist Dermot O'Brien.
"Theirs is going to decline over the next 40 years, and at an accelerating pace, while ours continues to increase."
The report argues that better economic prospects in Ireland will draw in more immigrants, and this in turn will spur faster growth.
"We expect immigration to account for half the population growth between now and 2020," said NCB economist Eunan King.
The new analysis challenges the perception that most immigrants are employed in building or semi-skilled areas like meat processing.
Instead, the biggest proportion are working in professional jobs. Less than 10pc of unskilled workers are foreign-born, compared with 15pc of professionals.
"The immigrants coming here have more third-level qualifications than the Irish-born population," Mr King said. "That is adding to the productivity of the economy. But there is no doubt the numbers we are forecasting will have significant implications for all aspects of society."
The present immigrant population is made up more of family units than single people, the research finds.
The average size of an immigrant household is just under three people - not much different from that of the Irish-born population. Only in Dublin and Cork cities did the report find a significantly larger number of single-person households.
Based on their forecasts, NCB see continued strong demand for housing. Over 40pc of the 100,000 immigrant households in 2002 were in rented accommodation. But 34pc were buying on a mortgage, which was not much less than the 38pc of Irish families.
Forecasts
"We expect the demand for housing to be about 65,000 units per year until 2015, then slowing to 55,000 a year until 2020," Mr O'Brien said.
He sees no reason for house prices to fall, although prices should slow to the same rate as incomes - 5pc to 7pc a year - if the market is to stabilise.
"I do not see what could threaten the housing market.
"The eurozone cannot support interest rates much above 4pc so there is no danger there.
"We have already seen the resilience of the Irish economy after the global downturn in 2001, when employment just kept on growing."
Even if immigration slowed to zero, the country will need more than 40,000 new houses a year.
And the growth in population of working age means the number of cars on the road will rise by at least 600,000, and probably by 1.5 million, the report says."
Another attempt to talk up the economy using immigration as the saviour of everything. Why hasn't any other country taught of this all you have to do is have very high immigration and the economy booms. Ireland is such a clever little country to have discovered this. I especially like the this piece
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The new analysis challenges the perception that most immigrants are employed in building or semi-skilled areas like meat processing.
Instead, the biggest proportion are working in professional jobs. Less than 10pc of unskilled workers are foreign-born, compared with 15pc of professionals. "
Rather than saying what proportion of immigrants is working in unskilled compared to skilled jobs which would show up the truth that the vast majority are working in unskilled areas. The statistics are turned around to show the immigrants percentage of the total workforce working in skilled and unskilled areas. There are far more workers in ireland working in unskilled jobs than in the professions. So 10% of unskilled workers is going to be a much higher figure than 15% of professionals. This is another example of using statistics to mislead people.
