Minister of State for integration Conor Lenihan has said that he believes last year's census gave a "serious underestimate" of the number of foreign nationals living in the State.
It was "pretty much acknowledged" in Government circles that the level of immigration was higher than that set out in official figures, and he speculated that non-Irish nationals could account for 13-15 per cent of the population. Asked if he thought that immigration would continue at current rates, Mr Lenihan said: "Yes, and in fact a most interesting feature is the actual levels that are being reported by the Central Statistics Office are a serious underestimate of the number of [ non-Irish] people."
"All my contact with the migrant groups and different representatives say there's huge under-reporting. And that even extends to the groups that you would think would most show up on the radar, in terms of them having a full legal right to be here - the eastern European migrants."
Mr Lenihan, who was speaking to The Irish Times on Saturday after addressing the annual conference of Akidwa, the African women's network, said the number of Polish nationals reported in the census (62,495) was a "huge underestimate" and suggested the true figure is likely to be 160,000-200,000. While it was difficult to speculate on immigrant numbers, he said the proportion of foreign nationals is "probably more likely to be 13 to 15 per cent".
Such discrepancies could be explained in part by the fluidity of migrant movements and by the "multiple occupancy" of apartments, which made it difficult to arrive at accurate numbers. A traditional suspicion of the State in some migrants' country of origin meant many had "no particular desire to log in with the State".
The Minister also defended the Government against accusations of poor planning for school provision in north Dublin, where there is severe pressure on places.
"The Balbriggan situation was largely caused by 8,000 empty houses in the Fingal area. If you look at the Fingal County Council reports, people suddenly moved in there in July," he said. "So you can accuse the State of bad planning, but I don't believe there's any State in the world that could plan for a situation where there are 8,000 empty houses because of our property slowdown and changes in that."
In his address, Mr Lenihan argued that the days of ad hoc policy responses to migration were over. "We've got to be very systemic, we've got to have structures in place that reflect the diversity of the country."
He added that there was a need to remind people that immigration was of immense social and economic benefit to Ireland.
"It's so easy for people to relax into the stereotypical negative views that can be generated rather cynically around migration . . . migration to Ireland is happening because of affluence. We're the fourth richest economy in the world and the fourth most open. If we want to be that open, and if we want to be a competitive player in the global trading system, we have to be open in our hearts - to be open to new people, to new identities, to new diversity."
Akidwa's national director, Salome Mbugua, urged greater engagement with migrant communities from Government and statutory agencies. "This engagement needs to be effective and meaningful rather than tokenistic," she said.