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The People of Ireland
Home » Ireland » Ireland - The People and Culture » The People of IrelandPeople have occupied Ireland for thousands of years, making it the unique country it is today. For over five thousand years, inhabitants moved westwards across the European continent and settled in Ireland. Each fresh cluster of immigrants, Vikings, Celts, Normans and English, has been a factor to its current population.
The primary areas of population concentration in Ireland are Dublin (953,000), Cork, Limerick, Galway, and Waterford. As of 1999, the population was estimated at 3,744,700 million. Ireland is unique in that a large percentage of the population is concentrated in the younger age groups. Approximately 43% of the population is under the age of 25 and around 27% is under the age of 15.
The people of Ireland are free to practice their own religion, and the majority of the Irish people belong to Christian denominations. The vast majority are Roman Catholics, while a small percentage are Protestant, which includes the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, and Methodist. There is even a tiny but long-established Jewish Community.
The Irish language of the people developed from Celtic immigrants around 600 BC and continued to exist during the initiation of the linguistic diversity of both the invading Normans and Vikings over the centuries. The Normans were the first immigrants to bring the English language to the country. Although it was established little by little in Ireland, slowly but surely English became the primary vernacular from the second half of the 18th century to today.
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