FALSE CLAIMS HAVE been widely shared online which suggest that Ireland now has a larger population of Muslims than people who live in Gaeltacht areas.

These claims have circulated since 14 October, when a number of accounts on X shared a graphic showing a map of Ireland with its Gaeltacht regions highlighted in green.

The graphic also featured two statistics: one which said “Gaeltacht population 106,000″ and another which said “Muslim population: 112,000″.

This image with incorrect data has been shared dozens of times on social media

However, the figure about Ireland’s Muslim population is incorrect.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), there were 81,930 Muslims in Ireland when the 2022 Census was taken.

The same Census results show there were 106,220 people living in Gaeltacht areas in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, Cork, Waterford and Meath.

It also recorded 1,873,997 people saying that they could speak Irish across the entire country, equivalent to around 40% of Ireland’s entire population over the age of three.

There are no statistics available on how many Muslims in Ireland are living in Gaeltacht areas, nor how many Muslims in Ireland are Irish speakers; this level of cross-referencing is not faciltated by the CSO.

The claim leans into the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which claims that native, white people in Europe are being replaced by non-white immigrants, often Arab or African people, and that this is orchestrated by a group of powerful elites.

It frequently features in misinformation about Muslims and non-white people, including in claims which suggest that a native country’s culture or heritage is being ‘destroyed’ by immigration or diversity.

The image containing the incorrect statistics has been shared repeatedly since it was first posted on social media.

On X, where the claim appears to have originated, posts containing the image have been seen more than 200,000 times.

The image has also been shared dozens of times on Facebook and Instagram, with Meta analytics showing it has been cumulatively seen more than ten thousand times on both platforms.

The incorrect statistics were even repeated by Gemini, Google’s AI overview tool after The Journal asked Google whether Muslims outnumbered people living Gaeltacht regions.

However, there is no legitimate source for the suggestion that there were more than 106,000 Muslims living in Ireland in 2022.

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