Ireland’s population increase will make climate goals harder to reach

Projections published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) this week show that Ireland’s population could rise to seven million by 2057 under what is called the “high net migration scenario” where significant numbers of people come to Ireland to live and work.

Under the low migration scenario, the population would peak at just under 5.8m in 2048 before starting to fall.

Under every migration scenario the CSO looked at, the number of people aged over 65 will increase from the Census 2022 level of 781,400.

It is expected to be between 1.81m and 1.94m by 2057, accounting for between 27.8% and 31.5% of the population, up from 15.1% in 2022.

Importantly, the ratio between the number of people aged 15 to 64 years old and those over 65 will also rapidly change.

This number, known as the dependency ratio, will rise from 2022’s level of 29.9% to as high as 55.9% under the low migration scenario. This would mean there would be fewer than two people of working age in the country for everyone over the age of 65.

Strain

Needless to say, this increase in the dependency ratio will put a huge strain on both public services and Government spending.

Earlier this year, the Government introduced legislation which will see an increase in the rate of PRSI by 0.7 percentage points between 2024 and 2028. The increase was introduced, in part, to support the retention of the State pension age at 66.

Having high net migration would be very positive here, as it would increase the number of working people in the country, meaning that future pension liabilities will be easier to meet.

However, there is another area of Government policy that will come under increasing pressure should the population expand as rapidly as projected.

Emissions

The climate action plan calls for a 51% reduction in Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from their 2018 level, and net-zero emissions by 2050.

Ireland’s population was 4.857m in 2018 and is forecast to rise to 5.759m by 2030. This 900,000, or 18.5%, increase means that an overall reduction of 51% in national carbon emissions means that the per-capita reduction in emissions will have to be a much higher 60.5%.

The 2050 goal of net-zero will remain unchanged on a per-capita basis, as the reduction per capita will be a net 100% no matter what the population is.

However, there is no doubt that will be harder to achieve with a population which could be 2m higher than 2018 levels.

In reality, what the change in population will probably mean is that industries in the economy already required to meet stringent targets will be under pressure to do even more over the coming years.

The risk for agriculture here is that this means the goalposts for everyone involved in food production would be moved again in the name of meeting a target which does not take account of the extra demands put on the economy by a growing population.