Ireland’s booming economy is attracting a new influx of foreign nationals while the number of people at work in the State is now nearly 20,000 higher that it was before the crash, new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show.

The CSO’s latest population statistics show that of the 90,300 people who immigrated here in the 12 months to April, two-thirds (61,900) were foreign nationals while the remainder were Irish nationals returning to live in the Republic from abroad.