Ireland's population has the fourth highest proportion of foreign EU citizens in the EU at 6.5% or 292,400 in 2011, it was revealed today.

According to figures just released by Eurostat, Luxembourg recorded the highest proportion at 37% of the total population, followed by Cyprus (13%), Belgium (6.8%), Ireland (6.5%), Spain (5%) and Austria (4%). The EU average is 2.5%.

A total of 8.1% (361,600) of the total population of Ireland in 2011 was composed of foreign citizens (EU and non-EU foreign citizens), compared to an EU average of 6.6%.

The highest proportion of foreign citizens in the population was observed in Luxembourg (43% of the total population), followed by Cyprus (20%), Latvia (17%) and Estonia (16%).

The percentage of foreign citizens was less than 2% in Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia.

In 2011, 33.3 million foreign citizens lived in the EU27 Member States, accounting for 6.6% of the EU27 population.

This foreign population comprised 12.8 million EU citizens living in another Member State, i.e. 2.5% of the EU27 population, and 20.5 million non EU citizens, i.e. 4.1% of the EU27 population.

The number of foreign-born people exceeded the number of foreign citizens in almost all Member States.