LAST YEAR FEWER than 10% of foreign nationals who received PPS numbers collected social welfare payments.
A total of 85,724 new numbers were handed out, with just 6,312 of these collecting payments before the end of 2014.
The CSO has noted that the low figure could be because a person has a child, becomes eligible for job seekers claims or other forms of benefit that require a certain period of residency.
A slight increase of the number in receipt can be seen with the elapse of time.
Out of the 62,984 foreign nationals that received PPS numbers in 2009, 11,764 currently receive social welfare payments – which works out at around 18%.
This is still substantially below the 1.4 million people, or 28%, of the total Irish population who are in receipt of weekly social welfare payment.
In total 2.2 million people, or 44% of the Irish population, benefit from these social welfare payments.
Getting down to work
Out of the 85,724 given PPS numbers last year, 29,637 are now in employment.
Looking back at foreign nationals given PPS numbesr in 2009, around one-fifth of foreign nationals were in employment in 2014.
Between 2002 and last year, 337,150 foreign nationals who have been granted PPS numbers are now in employment in Ireland.
The total number of PPS numbers allocated since 2011 has been steadily increasing, with a 12.9% rise between 2013 and last year.
The biggest employment areas for foreign nationals have been found to be the retail and manufacturing industries.
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