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Spanish, Romanians and Brazilians are moving to Ireland in their droves, official data has revealed.

There has been a huge leap in the numbers putting down roots here from the three nations, the Central Statistics Office confirmed.

The Spanish population here increased by 78% from 6,794 to 12,112 between 2011 and 2016 while Romanians are in second place with an increase of 69% (17,304 to 29,186) people during the same period.

Previous spikes in immigrants from the UK, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have seen a slide.

Cormac Halpin, Senior Statistician with the CSO, said: “One of the many benefits of census data is the information it gives us on the individual groups that make up Ireland’s population.

“This report details the top ten largest non-Irish national populations living in Ireland and looks at the characteristics of each covering topics such as where they live, age profile, education, language ability, housing, general health, work and occupations”.

The study also detailed where the populations were living with 64% of Brazilians living in Dublin city and its suburbs.

Romanians and Italians recorded were at 58% in the capital while Spanish born people accounted for 52% living in greater Dublin.

In a noticeable difference, 50% of UK nationals lived in rural Ireland, including rural towns.

The study also reveals that the age profile of the various nationalities with the Brazilian population being the youngest at 29.9 years compared with the State average of 37.3 years.

Romanian nationals were the second youngest at 30.5 years while the eldest were UK nationals at 46.7 years and Germans at 40.5 years.

The most well educated are French nationals, who had the highest proportion of post graduate degrees at 15 years and over.

Polish nationals had the largest number of people (8,736) with post graduate degrees.

70% of Germans aged four years and over indicated that they spoke English very well, the highest proportion of the nine non native English speaking nationalities profiled.