Almost a quarter of Belfast district's residents were born outside the UK and Ireland according to official data

In the wake of the anti-immigrant protests and rioting in the area at the weekend, the News Letter has taken a look at what the latest census figures say about the make-up of the city's population.

Belfast City Council is divided up into 10 different zones called 'district electoral areas' (DEAs) and the NI Statistics and Research Agency gives a breakdown of who lives in each one.

The Botanic DEA is where the weekend unrest centred.

It covers most of the city centre in its northern end, the Markets and the Ormeau Road in the east, Sandy Row and the Village in the west, and the university area and Stranmillis in the south.

The Botanic DEA is very densely populated; it contains almost 50,000 people, or 2.6% of the province's population, making it the most populous DEA in the whole of Northern Ireland.

The 2021 census showed that 10% of Belfast City Council's population were born outside of the British Isles (that is, the UK and Ireland). Meanwhile 7% of its population was non-white, and 7% had main language that was not English.

But that is for all of Belfast. In the Botanic DEA specifically it is much higher: 23% were born outside the British Isles, 18% were non-white, and 15% had a main language other than English.

Going deeper still into the figures shows that the population born outside the British Isles is especially high in the Sandy Row area.

Here is the proportion of foreign-born residents in the three sub-districts (officially called super data zones) which cover the general Sandy Row area:

Botanic A (city centre and north edge of Sandy Row): 51%

Botanic C (taking in the eastern edge of Sandy Row and part of Donegall Pass): 49%

Botanic F (taking in the west and south of Sandy Row): 23%.

At the weekend, South Belfast DUP MLA Edwin Poots (pictured) said: “Working people are being driven out of the community because housing is unaffordable and unattainable.

“Essential services such as access to GPs and dentists are incredibly difficult to access.”