Debunked: Project Ireland 2040 isn't a plan 'to flood the country with nearly 2m extra people’

IN CERTAIN CIRCLES of the internet, Project Ireland 2040 is frequently mentioned in discussions where conspiracy theorists claim that it shows the government is secretly trying to “import” millions of non-white people into the country.

The supposed motives of successive governments to carry out this multi-decade plan are unclear, though the claims strongly echo Great Replacement conspiracy theories that say there is a plan to wipe out the native populations of Europe and replace them with non-white immigrants.

These claims have no basis in fact. 

The actual Project Ireland 2040 is a set of government publications that describes itself an “overarching policy and planning framework for the social, economic and cultural development” of Ireland. Its documents are public and do not include any plans to “import” millions of foreigners.

This has not stopped spurious claims about the plan from continuously spreading online since shortly after the project was first announced.

“Take Project Ireland 2040, this grand scheme to flood the country with nearly two million extra people by 2040, slapped together in 2018 with a price tag of €96 billion,” reads an Instagram post from 23 February by fringe account Off-Grid Ireland, a page which regularly posts racist conspiracy theories.

So, what is Project 2040, and does it include a plan to bring millions of extra people into the country?

Project Ireland 2040 was launched by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government in 2018, described as “the government’s long-term overarching strategy to make Ireland a better country for all and to build a more resilient and sustainable future”.

In effect, it consists of two major documents, the National Planning Framework and the National Development Plan 2021-2030, both of which are available online.

For the average reader, these documents do not promise excitement, with chapters titled, “Rural Investment Coordination”, “Enhanced Amenity and Heritage”, and “Age Friendly Communities”.

Largely, these documents consist of general aspirations and broad strategies on how to plan and organise for future growth, such as what bodies should draw up policies, who should implement them, and where funding will come from. 

There are references to future population growth in these documents, as well as on the Project 2040 website.

“By 2040, there will be approximately one million additional people living here in Ireland,” the website reads. “This population growth will require hundreds of thousands of new jobs, new homes, heightened cultural, and social amenities, enhanced regional connectivity and improved environmental sustainability.”

“Our population is set to grow by approximately 1 million people between 2016 and 2040,” the National Development Plan 2021-2030 says in its foreword.

“Ireland stands on the cusp of great change,” the National Planning Framework begins. “In the next twenty years we will grow by an extra one million people.”

Eagle-eyed readers may have already noticed a contradiction. Off-Grid Ireland said that Project 2040 was a “grand scheme to flood the country with nearly two million extra people by 2040”.

But the plans don’t mention that figure. Instead, it mentions a number half of what was claimed. And, to be precise, it turns out that the figure of one million extra people was already rounding up.

“Ireland’s population will grow by just under 900,000 people, to almost 5.7 million people by 2040,” the National Planning Framework explains.

So, even if the figure is less than 2 million, does this mean that the government is planning to “import” 900,000 people?

No. The report clearly states that the estimate of 900,000 additional people comes from the ESRI (the Economic and Social Research Institute, an independent research group that receives government funding), namely a report called Prospects for Irish Regions and Counties, which was published in 2018 and is also readily available online.

Section 4.1 of this report, called Projecting the Population, outlines methods that are used to predict the population at a future date.

This is largely from measuring past growth in regions of Ireland and projecting them into the future, but the report also tries to refine this by accounting for the birth rate, the average lifespan (if more people are living longer, the death rate goes down and the population goes up), as well as emigration and immigration.

In this case, it notes “net migration is assumed to run at on average just over 8,000 per year and from 2021 onwards net migration is assumed to run at 12,500 per annum” — these figures would account for about 282,000 additional people between 2016 and 2040, a far cry from the two million figure cited by conspiracy groups.

The report concludes that “the national population is projected to increase by almost 900,000 persons to 5.634 million” through a combination of migration, birth rates, death rates and lifespans. 

Although this may seem like a stark increase, the report notes: “Since 1991 the population of Ireland grew by just over 1.2 million people.”

It should be noted that the projections used in Project Ireland 2040 are from 2016.

In 2024, the population of Ireland was estimated to be 5.38 million, and the CSO’s population projections are higher, including a “moderate net migration” scenario which would see the population hit 6 million just before 2040.

However, these more recent projections have little connection with Project Ireland 2040, which did mention a population increase by 2040 of 900,000 people – not 2 million, as some conspiracy groups had claimed.

Rather than planning to engineer a population increase, this figure comes from an ERSI projection estimate from 2016 which makes it clear that the increase is largely due to factors other than immigration.

Ultimately, Project 2040 is a plan to cope with a population that has been increasing for decades, rather than an attempt to bring in additional people.

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