In recognition of this significant contribution to Scottish life, at 7pm on Friday evening 21st November 2008 an historic event will take place when associations and organisations defined as Irish or that have an Irish dimension to their character will come together to launch the Irish Diaspora in Scotland Association at a civic reception on behalf of Glasgow City Council. The event will be attended by official Irish Government representation, MPs, MSPs, local councillors, representatives from various ethnic minority groups, figures from several religious bodies, council leaders, academics, members of the business community, sports people and representatives from the organisations that currently comprise IDSA.

Scottish Government leader, Alex Salmond, has made it a matter of policy for Scotland to be a proud, plural multi-cultural society. The emergence of IDSA, reflecting as it does the cultural identities of Scotland’s longest established immigrant community, shows how a firmly integrated community in Scottish life can also hold its origins and heritage in such high esteem.

As well as various 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation Irish individuals, IDSA embraces numerous groups significant to Irish cultural life in Scotland. Thousands of people from within Scotland’s multi generational Irish community are represented by IDSA. The Association contains the following groups;

century McCaffrey estimates that there was around 150,000 Catholics in the country although the figure of 332,000 by 1878 may be a more accurate estimate and a better indicator of the number of Irish coming to Scotland during the period of Famine and for several decades afterwards.

Proportionately, in relation to the size of the Scottish population, more Irish immigrated to Scotland than to any other country.  This figure is striking when one considers that the vast majority of Irish and their offspring eventually settled in a 30-mile radius around the greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire areas in the west-central belt.  Collins estimates that around eight per cent of all Irish born emigrants went to Scotland during the period 1841 to 1921 and most Irish immigration to Scotland took place during this time. Although after 1921 emigrant Irish continued to go to Scotland, the country declined as a significant focus of settlement, although the post-World War II boom period in Britain increased immigration from Ireland and resulted in thousands of Ulster, and Donegal people in particular, arriving in the Glasgow area. 

Today, the Irish in Scotland are a multi-generational ethnic community that have influenced and characterised many areas of Scottish life, especially in the west-central belt.  John Wheatley (politics), Billy Connolly (film & comedy), James MacMillan (classical music), Professor Tom Devine (academia), Liz McColgan (athletics), Archbishop Tom Winning (Church), Denis Canavan (politics), Willie Haughey (business), Jim Kerr (popular music), John Byrne (TV producer & writer), Bernard Ponsonby (media) Eilish Angiolini (law) and Aiden McGeady (football) are only some of the individuals that publicly reflect the Irish influence in Scottish life.  Institutions like the Catholic Church, revitalised in the wake of Irish immigration, Celtic Football Club, founded and sustained by the Irish and their offspring, and Scottish political life, infused as it has been by a social conscience, awareness and activism arising from the Irish experience in Ireland and Scotland, all reflects how well this community has integrated into and contributed to life in modern Scotland. 

In the new millennium there are approximately 50,000 people in Scotland who have migrated from Ireland in recent decades.  Over 100,000 more have a parent who was born in Ireland.  Even so, most of the modern Irish in Scotland are 3