Few nations on earth have been as marked by migration as Ireland over the past two centuries. Millions have left these shores and been scattered all across the world, forming a diaspora many times larger than the population of the island itself.

Over the past two decades, we have also seen dramatic shifts in Ireland’s migration experience, first from net emigration to net immigration during the Celtic Tiger economic boom, and then back to high emigration after the financial crash in 2008. Today, Ireland has an almost unique migration profile for a developed country, with approximately 17 per cent of Irish people living abroad, and approximately 17 per cent of the people in Ireland originally from elsewhere.