CLAIMS THAT MORE than 60% of prisoners in Irish prisons are foreign nationals have spread online despite being dramatically wrong.

The Irish Prison Service regularly posts up-to-date data on the make-up of the prison population, including statistics on the “Nationality Group” of prisoners.

Similarly, prison statistics released by the Council of Europe in June also give a breakdown of people in Irish prisons by nationality status.

These sets of data show that foreign nationals make up a minority of the prison population, between 15-17% of prisoners.

Claims are regularly spread in Irish fringe social media groups that foreigners or certain ethnic groups are inherently criminal.

“61% of all prisoners in Ireland are foreign nationals, just let that sink in,” a now-deleted post on X read.

“On the 1st Sept this year, 4,612 people were in Prison. 2,814 of them were foreign nationals. It costs €84,046 per year to keep a prisoner, a total of €241,548,204 to imprison foreign nationals.”

Despite the tweet being deleted, the claim has since been repeated by other users and remains on X.com.

In still-online responses, the user who made that post gives his source as the “SPACE I – 2023″ report on prison populations, published by the Council of Europe in June.

It is unclear how a report published in June (and based on 2023 statistics) could contain up-to-date figures on the prison population in September 2024.

However, up-to-date figures for September of this year are readily available.

The Irish Prison Service figures show that there was an average of 4,953 people in custody in September (not 4,612), and that, of them, 856 were from a “non-Irish nationality group” (not 2,814).

This means that non-Irish prisoners amounted to about 17% of the prison population, not 61% as the post on X said.

Of these non-Irish prisoners, half were from other European Union countries, and another 13% of the cohort were from Britain.

But what of the Council of Europe report that was cited as a source? Does the “SPACE I” analysis of data from 2023 imply that 61% of prisoners in Ireland were foreign nationals last year?

Helpfully, this report includes a table that directly answers this question

“Prison populations by nationality on 31 January 2023 (percentages)”, or Table 13, shows that 14.6% of the prison population were non-nationals — a far cry from the 61% asserted.

Ireland also had a single prisoner whose nationality was recorded as “unknown”.

Incidentally, the maths in the post on X is also wrong: 2,814 multiplied by €84,046 does not equal €241,548,204. However, this is a minor point, as some of the figures they are based on appear to be fictional. (The cost of keeping a prisoner given was approximately correct.) 

It should also be noted that none of the other figures mentioned in the tweet’s claim appear in either the Irish Prison Service September report (or the previous one), nor the Space I report, which was cited as a source.

The poster of the original tweet also replied to numerous people saying alternative figures were “based on People who don’t hold an Irish Passport, the 61% is based on people not born in Ireland, when you check the yearly stats”.

We checked the stats; they do not say that.

Instead, they indicate, as the other reports do, that the vast majority of prisoners in Irish prisons are Irish.

This year, The Journal has debunked multiple false stories about foreign nationals committing crimes, which appear to be attempts at smearing migrants or ethnic groups.

These include claims that a foreign national tried to snatch a child from its mother in Cork City; that a “black man” had smashed up display screens at Dublin Airport; that a man charged with weapons offences was not Irish, that a foreign national had brandished a handgun on Dublin’s O’Connell Street; that there was a media blackout on covering crimes by migrants; as well as claims that non-white election candidates were criminals or were planning on implementing Sharia law.

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