Why Ireland has fewer people than 200 years ago

23 comments
  1. Noone ever seems to talk about the insane population boom from around 5 million in 1800 to 8.18 million in 1841. While Irelands population hasn’t grown in the same way as other nations the only reason for such a dramatic fall in population is that anomaly

    If you take 1800 as the figure to discuss rather than 1841 Ireland has increased its population from 5 million to 7 million showing a net increase

  2. It used to be that Children were to some extent seen as free labour on farms . Nowadays anybody who is a parent knows they are expensive to rear. Combine that with contraception and people moving to cities and you have smaller families. Our demographics ( birth rate ) are not the worst in the world .. For the same reasons some countries are facing population collapse.

  3. There’s a key assumption I sharply disagree with: bigger is always better. Even if having 50 million people made Ireland a GDP monster, what is the cost? Environmental, social, health, etc.? Look at China: 1.4 billion people, second biggest GDP but at what cost? Where would you rather live and raise a family?

    Glancing at the happiest countries, many of them have small populations. We can say smaller populations means more resources for everyone, thus, better quality of life. Hell, the happiness index aims to capture what GDP doesn’t.

    [Ireland is rank 15](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world) while China is rank 82. Do you really wanna trade that for bigger numbers? The USA is the biggest GDP but is only rank 19.

  4. Imagine the government trying to manage housing and hospital waiting lists if the population was 27 million.
    There’d be no where to rent/buy and you be waiting ages for a medical procedure /s

  5. The famine was over 170 years ago and the Brits left over hundred years ago. The question is not why the population of Ireland was less at independence than at the turn of the 19th century. It is why the current population is less than the population 200 years ago. There was no population growth in the first 70 years after the independence when all other countries were experiencing a population boom. It was the bad polices adopted by the Irish govt that led to wave after wave of emigration. Blaming the Brits is easier option but not always the right one.

  6. Sorry more population is better. The problem is Irelanda upturn in population has coincided with Dublin becoming the biggest city by a mile. This is not unique but other countries had more even population growth in a wider area for linger which helps those countries infrastructure and services.
    There should be a couple of more proper population centres in Ireland than there is now. The country would be richer culturally and socially for it

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