Ireland’s fertility rate continues to tumble and is now well below the replacement rate for the population, latest figures show.
The fertility rate in 2024 was 1.5 children per mother. The replacement rate for the population - the rate at which people who die are being replaced by people being born - is 2.1 according to the Central Statistics Office.
The last time that the fertility rate was at replacement level was in 2009. Since then it has been in steep decline.
The number of children being born is in equally sharp decline. Births in Ireland peaked at 75,554 in 2009 from a smaller population base. In 2008 the birth rate peaked in this century at 17.0 births per 1,000; it has now dropped to 10 per 1,000.
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Last year 54,062 births were registered (these would include some children born in 2023 who were registered in 2024), a decrease of 1 per cent on the 54,678 births registered in 2023.
The fact that there are on average 20,000 fewer children being born in the State will have long-term implications for schools and universities.
Mothers continue to get older. The average age of a mother at maternity was 33.3 in 2024. Twenty years ago it stood at 30.8. The average age of the first-time mother in 2024 is 31.7; it 2004 it was 28.5.
The number of marriages in the State is also in sharp decline from 5.1 per 1,000 in 2004 to 3.8 in 2024.
The number of deaths registered in 2024 was 35,173, which was 286 fewer than the 2023 figure of 35,459.
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Persons aged 65 and over, accounted for more than four-fifths (83.2 per cent or 29,276) of all deaths.
For those aged under 55, the three most common causes of death were malignant neoplasms (890), external causes of injury and poisoning (701), and diseases of the circulatory system (441).
These three groupings accounted for 69.4 per cent of deaths for this age group.
Ireland’s relatively healthy demographic means that births continue to exceed deaths in the State but the gap is narrowing. The natural increase (births less deaths) in 2024 was 18,889.
Ireland is one of only seven EU countries out of 27 where the birth rate continues to exceed the death rate. Since 2012 Europe’s population growth has been negative as deaths have been greater than births since then.
Figures released from the EU statistics agency, Eurostat, shows the Irish population grew by 81,000 or 1.5 per cent in 2023, the last year for which figures are available.
The population reached 5.32 million at the start of 2024.
Since the 2004 accession treaty, which admitted 10 states from eastern Europe, the population of the Irish state, then at just four million, has increased by a third.
