Migrants sent €785m home to their families

Some €785m was transferred out of Ireland in personal remittances last year, mostly as a result of migrants sending money back to family members in their homeland.

Migrants sent €785m home to their families

Some €785m was transferred out of Ireland in personal remittances last year, mostly as a result of migrants sending money back to family members in their homeland.

New figures published by the European Commission show Ireland had the sixth-highest level of personal transfers among the 28 EU states in 2017.

The only countries with bigger outflows of money by migrants were France, Spain, the UK, Italy, and Belgium.

The value of money transferred abroad by people living in the Republic in 2017 was up 1.2% on the previous year, an increase of €9m.

The majority of personal transfers consist of flows of money sent by migrants to their country of origin. In most cases, money is being transferred to other family members.

The vast bulk of the money sent from Ireland stays within the EU.

Ireland had the third-highest level of personal transfers within the EU, with money sent to other EU member states accounting for 79% of all remittances, due to the high percentage of foreign nationals living in the Republic who are from other EU member states, such as Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania.

There are 535,000 foreign-born nationals living in the Republic, or approximately 11.6% of the population.

Eleven EU countries recorded a net inflow of money from personal transfers, including Portugal, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, all countries that have a high proportion of their citizens living in other EU states.

For example, the net surplus was worth €3bn to the Portuguese economy last year.

In Ireland, there is no inward flow of personal remittances, sent from outside the Republic, unlike in previous decades, when Irish emigrants would have sent money home to their families from countries like the UK, the US, and Australia.

€32.7bn was sent outside the EU by people living in the EU in 2017, with the biggest amounts sent to Asia (20%) and north Africa (19%).

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