fertility rate<\/a> \u2014 a measure of the number of children born to women over their lifetimes \u2014 fell from 1.9 to 1.5.<\/p>\nA rate of 2.1 is generally considered the replacement fertility level \u2014 the number of children each woman would need to have to maintain a stable population.<\/p>\n
Falling fertility rates are a challenge facing developed nations around the world, contributing to issues such as pension funding pressures as older populations increasingly outnumber people of working age.<\/p>\n
The CSO figures show that the average age of first-time mothers in Ireland increased by 1.1 years, from 30.7 in 2015 to 31.8 in 2025. The trend mirrors developments across many western countries, with women waiting longer to have their first child.<\/p>\n
The change is even more pronounced when compared with 20 years ago, when the average age of first-time mothers was 28.7.<\/p>\n
The average age of mothers overall was 33.3 years in 2025, up from 32.5 in 2015 and 31 in 2005.<\/p>\n
The number of deaths recorded in Ireland in 2025 was 35,587, an increase of 414 compared with 2024.<\/p>\n
People aged 65 and over accounted for 83% of deaths \u2014 29,645 in total \u2014 last year, a figure likely to rise further as the population continues to age.<\/p>\n
Among people aged under 55, the most common causes of death were neoplasms \u2014 commonly referred to as tumours \u2014 which accounted for 852 deaths. This was followed by injuries and poisoning, which accounted for 631 deaths, and diseases of the circulatory system, which accounted for 477 deaths.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, of the 19,898 marriages registered in 2025, 624 \u2014 or 3% \u2014 involved same-sex couples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s birth rate fell by close to a fifth over the past 10 years, according to new statistics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[494,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-479324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-fertility","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}