A SAINT PATRICK’S Day visit to the White House saw former-UFC champion Conor McGregor speak from the West Wing’s press briefing room before meeting with US president Donald Trump.

“I’m here to raise the issues the people of Ireland face,” McGregor said. “It’s high time that America is made aware of what is going on in Ireland.”

However, data indicates that some things McGregor claimed are going on in Ireland, in fact, are not.

Much of McGregor’s comments could be considered opinion, but one verifiable claim did stand out.

“There are rural towns in Ireland that have been overrun in one swoop, that have become a minority in one swoop,” McGregor said, after complaining about illegal immigration.

Available evidence suggests that this claim about migrants in Ireland is false.

The most reliable figures we have come from a CSO release describing the results of the most recent census, taken in April 2022, as a massive influx of Ukrainians and others seeking asylum came into the country.

Rather than there being “rural towns” where the Irish had become a minority, the results showed that Irish residents were the majority in every town.

“Ballyhaunis in Mayo was the town with the highest proportion of non-Irish residents at 37%,” the release said. “Other towns with a large share of non-Irish citizens included the Longford towns of Ballymahon (33%) and Edgeworthstown (31%).”

Interestingly, rather than reflecting a surge in immigration, the profile of Ballyhaunis shows a drop in the proportion of non-Irish residents: it had been higher at 39.5% of its population in 2016, and 41.5% in 2011. Ballyhaunis was also the town with the most non-Irish residents in those years.

The data available from the 2022 Census covers communities of various sizes. For all these communities, Irish people were in the majority.

The CSO uses a category called Built Up Areas. As per new CSO standards, these are settlements of “groups of 100 buildings or more [..] within 500m of each other.” So while all Irish towns are should be covered by this definition, some small villages are not included in this data.

It should also be noted that while a significant number of Ukrainians have fled to Ireland since the Russian invasion, there is no reason to think that this has made the Irish a minority in any town. 

In the local electoral area with the highest proportion of Ukrainians, Ennistimon in Co. Clare, these made up 10.81% of the population, according to a February CSO release.

It should also be noted that there is no reason to think that the towns with the highest percentage of non-Irish residents have been the victim of an “illegal immigration racket” that McGregor complained of.

“In Ballyhaunis, 5% of the population were Brazilian citizens, 4% were Polish and 3% were Croatian,” a breakdown of Census 2022 by the CSO reads. “In Ballymahon, Polish citizens accounted for 10% of the population, with Brazilian citizens making up a further 8%.”

Poland and Croatia are both in the EU, meaning that their citizens are largely free to move and work in Ireland.

Similarly, large numbers of Brazilians legally live in Ireland, in part because they do not need a visa to travel to Ireland, after which they can decide whether to apply for a residency permit.  

It could also be argued that there are migrants who illegally entered or stayed in Ireland without permission. As such, non-Irish residents might be undercounted.

This may be the case, but a 2022 release by the ERSI into “irregularly staying migrants” indicates that these make up about 3 percent of all migrants in the country (by comparing the top estimate of undocumented persons by an NGO against the population). In other words: not enough to indicate that Irish residents are a minority in any town, even Ballyhaunis.

This is not the first time that McGregor, who has repeatedly hinted at a run for the Irish presidency, expressed his opposition to immigration in Ireland, including posting “Ireland, we are at war” on Twitter (now X) ahead of the Dublin riots in 2023.

McGregor has also called for the deportation of all those living in Ireland illegally, as well as any immigrant convicted of a crime.

(McGregor has himself been found guilty of numerous crimes in Ireland, including multiple assaults, as well as being found in a civil case to have sexually assaulted a woman — an appeal on that case is expected to be heard this month).

McGregor’s turn to politics appears to have been spurred by his reaction to measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19, including saying that vaccines did not work, a claim debunked by The Journal.

However, despite what official data says, it is possible that McGregor’s claims could find a sympathetic ear in US President Donald Trump, who is prone to endorse claims that paint immigration in a bad light, even when those claims are baseless.

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