It is estimated that 8 million men, women and children emigrated from Ireland in the nineteenth century, of whom some five per cent, a not-insignificant proportion, found their way to Australia and New Zealand. Just as significantly, The Oxford Companion to Irish History (1998, p. 31) considers that Irish migrants 'made up nearly a quarter of all immigrants [to Australia] during that period'.
The significance of the historic links between Ireland, particularly the nine counties of the historic province of Ulster, and Australia and New Zealand, are explored in The Irish in Australia and New Zealand: A Resource for Family Historians.