NEW YORK — Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin pushed back on the notion that Ireland has been "overrun" by immigrants as nearly one in four residents is now foreign-born, arguing that the country's dramatic demographic change has been driven largely by legal migration tied to its economic success story.
Martin, in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, acknowledged failures in Ireland's asylum system after a record surge in applications, saying it "was too slow" in recent years.
He also addressed moves to tighten citizenship rules and opened the door to publishing crime statistics by nationality amid a heated debate over immigration and crime.
The issue has become a political flashpoint across Europe and the U.S. and comes weeks after President Donald Trump warned about Europe's approach while appearing alongside Martin in Dublin.
"That immigration, what you're doing to yourselves, you're just killing yourselves," Trump said.
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"Ireland is not overrun in any shape or form," Martin told Fox News Digital. "But we are conscious that it is an issue that has to be addressed robustly, firmly, fairly as well in terms of those seeking asylum."
"All over Europe it's tightening up because of the pressures and migration has created significant political pressures across Europe," he added.
"Obviously, illegal migration is the more potent issue. And our system was too slow in processing those seeking asylum. That has changed. We've accelerated the application and the consideration of applications, and we've also now accelerated the appeals process."
Martin said his government is developing a new migration strategy that includes proposals to increase residency requirements for citizenship from five to eight years and introduce language and economic self-sufficiency requirements.
Immigration has become increasingly intertwined in Ireland's political debate with concerns over housing, crime and rapidly changing demographics in a country that was drastically more homogeneous a generation ago.
The issue burst into international view in November 2023, after Algerian-born Irish citizen Riad Bouchaker stabbed three young children and a childcare worker outside a school in Dublin, triggering riots as anger among some opponents of mass immigration spilled into violence on the streets of the capital. The unrest was followed by sustained opposition to government efforts to house asylum seekers in communities across the country, with some protests also descending into violent clashes.
Immigration returned to the spotlight this summer following the violent killing of Jamey Carney, a 43-year-old American mother from New York who was found dead at her home in County Kerry.
Her Jordanian boyfriend, the suspect in the case, had applied for asylum in Ireland but was rejected and was appealing the decision while remaining in the country. He fled Ireland for Turkey shortly after the killing, later traveling to Jordan and Irish police are now seeking his extradition.
Fox News Digital asked Martin whether the case exposed weaknesses in Ireland's immigration system and whether laws needed to be changed.
"We're looking at all of that in terms of tightening up the laws," Martin said. "We will make sure that, particularly if people's applications are rejected, that there's fast movement in terms of the consequences of that."
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Critics of Ireland's immigration policies have argued that migrants are disproportionately responsible for crime, while opponents of that view say such claims unfairly stigmatize the country's growing foreign-born population. But the debate has been difficult to settle because Irish national crime statistics do not routinely publish nationality breakdowns, leaving limited public data to test competing claims.
The lack of data has prompted calls for greater transparency from women's advocates and some Irish lawmakers, including proposals to publish crime statistics broken down by nationality.
"I've no issue with data ... because that can inform, because sometimes you get a kind of distorted picture," Martin said when asked whether crime statistics should include the nationality of alleged suspects. "So as far as I'm concerned, data is important."
But Martin pushed back on the argument that nationality itself drives crime.
"I don't think crime is specific to any nationality," he said. "But there are issues there, and in some cases, yes, there's been horrific crimes committed, but not all by illegal migrants either."
Housing has become another flashpoint as Ireland struggles to build enough homes to keep pace with its growing population.
Martin acknowledged that workers arriving legally in Ireland add to housing demand but said his government’s answer is to increase supply, with about 36,000 homes built last year, up more than 20% from the previous year and the highest annual total since 2011.
The Irish government's reliance on hotels and other properties to house asylum seekers has itself become a flashpoint. The state spent about $1.4 billion on asylum accommodation and related services in 2025, while also buying properties outright, including the sprawling Citywest Hotel and Convention Centre for about $175 million.
The allocation of scarce public housing has further fueled the immigration debate.
The pressure is particularly acute in Dublin, where figures released by the city council this month showed 42% of the 15,005 households on its social-housing waiting list were categorized as non-Irish, fueling anger online as Ireland's homeless population hit a record high last month.
Nationally, 28.7% of social housing applicants — nearly 18,000 households — were non-Irish citizens in 2025, according to government figures provided to Fox News Digital. That included nearly 3,200 applicants from outside the EU with refugee status, up 64% from the previous year.
Asked whether Irish citizens should receive preferential treatment for social housing amid pressure on waiting lists, Martin backed the idea, saying that "our position is basically its citizens get priority."
Ireland's demographic transformation has been rapid.
Nearly one in four people living in Ireland was born abroad, up from about one in seven two decades ago. At 23.3%, Ireland now has the fourth-highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the European Union, according to Eurostat.
The transformation accelerated after the EU expanded eastward in 2004, a decision that helped fuel a sharp rise in immigration during Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economic boom, when years of rapid growth transformed the country from one of Western Europe's poorer economies into one of its wealthiest.
"It's a bit like America really, free movement for the states here," Martin said. "Our economy's expanded hugely."
Martin pointed to financial services and medical devices as industries that rely on skilled foreign workers, including non-EU workers arriving on work permits. More than half a million non-EU citizens were living in Ireland at the start of 2025, accounting for 9.3% of the population, according to Eurostat.
"It has been very dramatic, I agree, in the last three decades, largely because of the economic growth of Ireland," Martin said. "You can't switch off an economy either."
Ireland's economy has undergone a remarkable turnaround since the economic stagnation of the 1980s, through the "Celtic Tiger" boom and a devastating crash in 2008, before rebounding strongly. Over those decades, Ireland became a major European base for U.S. multinationals including Apple, Meta, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.
Martin has been at the center of Irish politics through much of that period, serving in successive Fianna Fáil-led governments from 1997 before becoming prime minister, or Taoiseach, in 2020 and returning to the post in 2025.
Ireland's economy continued to expand in 2025, with GDP growing 8%, according to Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO).
But prosperity has not eliminated pressure on households: nearly 45% reported difficulty making ends meet, while 64% identified housing and the same share identified inflation and the cost of living as among Ireland's most pressing problems, according to the CSO.
Ireland's more recent migration pressures have included a post-pandemic surge in asylum applicants, including people arriving from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. Applications jumped from roughly 3,500 a year before COVID to a record 18,561 in 2024, before falling nearly 30% last year and continuing to decline in 2026.
Separately, more than 120,000 Ukrainians fleeing Russia's invasion arrived under the EU's Temporary Protection system rather than the asylum system. Martin said roughly 80,000 remain in Ireland, with many now working and contributing to the economy.
Martin also emphasized that EU free movement works in both directions, with Irish citizens themselves living and working throughout the bloc.
"Irish people are working and living all over Europe," Martin said. "That's the other side of that story and that is something perhaps that we're not as conscious of, but it is reality."
Martin also placed Ireland's modern demographic transformation within the country's much longer history of emigration, pointing to the exodus that followed the Irish Famine.
"Ireland had 8 million people in 1845 before the Great Famine. That led to the big wave of Irish people migrating to come to America," Martin said.
"We're not at that level yet on the island of Ireland, so we need to look at it through the broad sweep of history in a historical perspective."
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