THE NUMBER OF births in Ireland has fallen by almost 20% over the last decade, according to newly released data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The number of births has fallen by 18.8% since 2010 and 1.3% since 2017.
There were 61,022 live births in Ireland in 2018 with 31,306 males and 29,716 females born, according to the CSO.
The 2018 total was 14,151 lower than 10 years previously when there were 75,173 live births.
Meanwhile, the average age of mothers who gave birth in 2018 was 32.9 years.
Mothers under the age of 30 accounted for 27.1% of births in 2018 compared with 2008 when mothers under 30 accounted for 39.3% of births.
Births to women over the age of 40 is up 42.4% since 2008.
More than a third (37.9%) of all births were outside of marriage or civil partnership in 2018. Thirty years earlier in 1988 that figure was 11.9%.
There were also 956 births to mothers under 20 years of age in 2018, down from 2,402 in 2008 – a decrease of 60.2%.
Deaths & Road Deaths
According to the CSO, there were 31,140 deaths in Ireland in 2018, an increase of 722 or 2.4% from 2017.
Of these:
Data releases today also shows that almost six out of every ten (57.9%) people killed on Irish roads in 2019 were car users (57.9%).
Of those, 19.3% were pedestrians and 11.4% were motor cyclists. Data for 2018 shows that 78.4% of people killed on Irish roads were men.
Travel
We may not be able to travel right now but in 2019 a total of 38.1 million passengers passed through Irish airports.
In 2019, the Dublin – Heathrow route carried the most air passengers (1,856,475) and accounted for almost one twentieth (4.9%) of all passenger movements that year.
The most popular country of origin-destination was the UK with 34.9% of passengers, followed by Spain with 12.3% and the USA with 10.1% of all international travel.
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