7,613 Ukrainians have arrived in Donegal since start of Russian invasion

New figures have revealed that a total of 7,613 Ukrainian refugees have been accommodated across Donegal, based on PPSN allocations, having arrived from the war torn country over the past two years.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has also confirmed there has been an increase of over 600 Ukrainians arriving here since October 9 of 2023, when the recorded county figure was 7,006.

Donegal has seven Local electoral areas (LEA’s) and the breakdown shows that the LEA of Donegal, housed the highest number of arrivals at 2,122.

The breakdown is as follows in terms of the largest LEA allocations:  (1) Donegal LEA 2,122; (2) Glenties LEA 1,512; (3) Letterkenny LEA 1,375; (4) Carndonagh LEA 847; (5) Milford LEA 835; (6) Lifford Stranorlar LEA 511 and (7) Buncrana LEA 411

While the arrivals are dispersed throughout the county, there is no town population in the county that actually surpasses the number of Ukrainian arrivals in their totality with the exception of Letterkenny. 

The nearest to this figure is the population of Buncrana. 

This figure also accounts for 7.26% of all the arrivals from Ukraine to the Republic since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and thereafter coming to this county. 

And this also works out at approximately 4.56% of the current official population of Donegal which currently stands at 167,084, although the CSO have clarified that some may have already arrived in the county by census night in April 2022.

They also said that some of those 7,613 arrivals may have gone back to Ukraine or moved to a location outside the county and the actual figure could be less.

There were 104,870 Personal Public Service Numbers (PPSNs) given to arrivals from Ukraine between March 4 2022 and February 4 2024, under the Temporary Protection Directive.

Of these arrivals from Ukraine, 78% had activity in administrative data after 30 November 2023, based on data currently available to the Central Statistics Office (CSO)

The figures was updated as of February 6, 2024 and released this week.