A numbers game: Why are there so few cross-Border romances?

Irish Times

09-05-2025

It's becoming harder for official statistics to document people's romantic relationships as informal partnerships are the norm for many young people.
Age at marriage is no longer a good guide to when people move in together, although marriage is not yet completely gone out of fashion: analysis of families for Census 2022 showed 69 per cent consisted of married couples, 19 per cent of single parents and 14 per cent of cohabiting couples.
Finding love overseas has long been a feature of the Irish emigrant experience. Many of those who moved to Irish communities in New York or Liverpool married someone else from home, but most of these couples made their lives in their adopted country.
More recently, a lot of Irish emigrants have been homing pigeons. They have returned to Ireland after a sojourn abroad, bringing with them enhanced skills – an important part of Ireland's productivity story.
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If people leave as couples, they are more likely to return. In addition, many of today's returned emigrants have found a partner abroad who is not Irish and have persuaded them to come to live here.
The data on births tell an important part of cross-country love stories. Over the last 20 years, up to 15 per cent of all babies born here have had one Irish parent and one who was not. Over half of these children have had an
EU
or
UK
parent.
Many of us living here have either partners or in-laws who were born elsewhere. This may help explain why anti-immigrant sentiment is relatively low in Ireland. It's harder to see members of your own extended family as somehow alien.
Our economic success has not just lured Irish-born people to settle back home, it has also brought many immigrant workers who staff our hospitals, our high-tech companies and our care sector.
The births data show how they are settling down and establishing families here. Fifteen per cent of births are to families where both parents are from outside Ireland, compared to 70 per cent to two Irish parents and 15 per cent with one Irish parent.
There is much more romance across the Irish Sea than across the Border
As these figures are based on citizenship of parents, it's also possible that some of the births recorded with two Irish parents may include a parent originally from abroad who has since acquired Irish citizenship.
Looking at data on the mother's birthplace, around 3 per cent of births are to mothers from Britain, and just 0.7 per cent to mothers from
Northern Ireland
. The 2022 census showed that 5.7 per cent of the population here had been born in Britain, compared to just 1.2 per cent in Northern Ireland.
The small numbers of northerners living in the South today mirrors the situation in the North, where only 2.4 per cent of the population was born south of the border.
There is much more romance across the Irish Sea than across the Border. This reflects the reality that for more than a century the population in both parts of the island has tended to migrate to Britain rather than across the Border.
Going back a century, emigration rather than internal migration was the norm when people left their home place to find work. While both Dublin and Belfast attracted incomers from their respective rural hinterlands, the scale was dwarfed by the numbers moving to live and work overseas. There were better job opportunities in the
United States
or Britain than on the island of Ireland.
A decade before partition, the 1911 census documented how few marriages took place across what became the Border. Cohabitation was negligible, so marriage data painted the full picture. Only 3 per cent of married men living in the North with northern brides had been born in the South. The figures were higher for men born and living in the North: 4 per cent had southern brides. The figures for cross-border marriages in the South were even lower.
Most of these 'mixed marriages' were in the counties that abut the Republic today. In
Fermanagh
, almost 9 per cent of wives had southern origins, mainly from the neighbouring counties of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal. Significant female employment in
Derry
drew in women from the surrounding hinterland, especially Donegal, many marrying Derry husbands.
Is the relative absence of North-South romances today a symptom, or a cause, of the separate development of society in the two jurisdictions over the last century?
Whatever the reason for the lack of romance, fewer cross-border family ties have probably contributed to the lack of understanding between the North and the South.
The
Department of the Taoiseach
's Shared Island initiative aims to break down those barriers. However, I don't envisage a north-south dating app being included on its agenda.