"POPULATION"
The population of the Irish Republic in 2000 was estimated
at 3,647,348, giving the country an overall population density
of 52 persons per sq km (134 per sq mi). The population
decreased from the 1840s, when about 6.5 million people
lived in the area included in the republic, until about 1970,
largely because of a high emigration rate. During the 1980s
the population increased at an annual rate of only about 0.5
percent, and by 2000 the rate had slowed to 0.41 percent.
Some 58 percent of the population lived in urban areas in 1998.
