Ireland has the sixth highest share of foreign citizens living on its territory in the European Union.

Eurostat says while foreign citizens accounted for 11.8% of the population of Ireland at the beginning of 2014, the majority of them - 8.1% - come from other EU member states.

The highest shares of foreign citizens living here came from Poland (118,042, or 22% of the total number of foreign citizens), the UK (115,658 or 21%) and Lithuania (35,617 or 7%).

The highest share of non-EU citizens came from Nigeria, representing 4% of total foreign citizens.

Ireland was one of only five EU countries - along with Belgium, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Slovakia - where the majority of foreign citizens came from other EU member states.

Source: Eurostat

In total, foreign citizens made up 6.7% of the population of the EU - with 42% of those from other EU countries and 58% from outside the EU.

In number terms, non-EU citizens were 19.8 million persons, while citizens of another EU member state stood at 14.3 million.

Luxembourg had the highest share (45.3%) followed by Cyprus (19.5%), Latvia (15.2%), Estonia (14.9%) and Austria (12.5%).

The lowest shares were seen in Poland (0.3%), Romania (0.4%), Croatia, Lithuania and Bulgaria (all 0.8%).