Many children who do not live with their fathers have little contact with them, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has found.

Researchers interviewed close to 10,000 (9,793) households with a three-year-old child as part of the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) longitudinal study.

1,172 or 12pc reported the child had a non-resident parent. Contact details were provided for almost 400 (all of them fathers) and responses were obtained from 137 of them. They presented a mixed picture.

Less than half (46.7pc) of non-resident parents reported spending seven nights or less with the three-year-old in a typical month.

Of the primary resident parents who provided contact details, almost four in ten (37.2%) reported that the other parent had daily contact with the child, whilst 13.6% reported that contact occurred less often than weekly (every second week, monthly, less than monthly, or never).

Of those primary resident parents who did not provide contact details, approximately one in eight (12.7%) reported that the non-resident parent had daily contact, and 55.8% reported that the non-resident parent had contact with the child less than weekly.