Rise in International Protection applicants joining Irish workforce

New figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) have shown there has been a big jump in the number of International Protections Applicants who are now employed and working in Ireland.

However, there has been a sharp increase in those receiving the Daily Expense Allowance (DEA), a social welfare benefit only available to International Protection applicants who live in, or are waiting to move into, accommodation provided by the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS).

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In 2022, the number of new beneficiaries of the DEA exceeded 10,000 for the first time, at 11,750 people. This number dropped to 10,252 people in 2023, before increasing again to 17,250 people in 2024.

The CSO looked at the age and sex of beneficiaries, and found the percentage share of women benefiting from the DEA was lower than men in every year. The year with the highest proportion of women was 2019, when it stood at 43% of the total beneficiaries. In both 2022 and 2023, this figure was 34%.

In 2024, almost half of all beneficiaries were aged between 25 and 44 years. The next largest group was the youngest cohort, with nearly a quarter of the total aged under 15 years.

Analysis found that Nigeria, Jordan, Somalia, and Pakistan had more than 1,000 new people benefiting from the DEA in 2024. Other countries that had over 1,000 people in previous years were Algeria in both 2022 and 2023, and Georgia in 2022.

There were also consistent considerable increases in the number of beneficiaries from Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Pakistan in the periods of 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024. In contrast to this there were considerable decreases recorded for Georgia and Zimbabwe during the same periods.

Jordan and the State of Palestine experienced minimal representation in 2022 with close to zero beneficiaries and following substantial increases the number of beneficiaries grew to 2,766 and 877 respectively in 2024.

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International Protection Applicants can work in Ireland if they have a Labour Market Access permit, which can only be granted once they have been in Ireland for at least six months. Previously this was nine months until it was reduced in 2021. This resulting time lag was clearly evident in the data CSO explored, as the percentage of applicants who entered the labour market increased dramatically in the years after their first year of DEA commencement.

For example, 77% of all new DEA beneficiaries from 2022 showed employment activity in 2024. In terms of a gender breakdown, for all new DEA beneficiaries from 2022, 83% of men and 65% of women had employment activity.

In addition, looking at age groups, the 25-44 age group had the highest employment activity. For the purposes of this analysis, any employments of less than €500 per annum and employments where the duration was less than two weeks in the year were excluded.

Analysis carried out by Labour Market and Earnings colleagues showed that non-Irish nationals, which would include a number of International Protection applicants, accounted for 21.0% of all employments in Ireland in Q2 2025.