Ireland remained top of the EU’s birth league last year, new figures show. 
The rate of births here — at 16.8 children born per 1,000 people — was the the highest in the European Union.
The figure is more than twice the rate of Germany’s birth rate of 7.9 per cent. The report from Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, says the rate was 17 per 1,000 the previous year — also the highest in the EU.
However, people are leaving the country at a higher rate than anywhere else in the EU.
The figures show that Ireland is significantly different from other Member States as regards population growth and outward migration. The overall population of the EU has grown to approximately 501.1 million at the start of 2010 from 499.7 million in 2009.
But Eurostat’s figures show that the net outflow from Ireland was nine people per thousand in 2009, reflecting a huge reversal from the heyday of the boom 2000 when the net population inflow of 8.4 per thousand was second only to Spain.
ESRI economist Thomas Conefrey has suggested significant proportion of the outflow so far reflects the departure of non-Irish nationals, according to the Irish Times. While detailed figures are not yet available, young Irish males are deemed be the second-largest group of migrants.
A baby boom in Ireland, which began in 2008, has brought the birth rate to levels not seen since the 1890s, and kept the overall population growth at 0.13pc.
Birth rates in the UK and France placed them second and third in the EU.
Germany, the EU’s largest economy, saw its total population decline 0.25pc to below 82m for the first time in at least 10 years.
The ESRI has projected the outflow for the 12 months to April 2010 could be as high as 70,000. By other measures, however, Ireland’s demographic trends go in the opposite direction. The Irish birth rate of 16.8 per thousand in 2009 was more than twice the German rate, the EU’s lowest, of 7.9 per thousand.
The death rate in Ireland was 6.6 per thousand, closely followed by Cyprus (6.7) and then Luxembourg (7.3) and Malta (7.8). Such figures are well below the highest rates, with the death of 14.2 per thousand in Bulgaria the highest observed figure in the EU.
The result of these trends was that Ireland recorded highest natural growth in population in the EU, at 10.2 per thousand. This was well ahead of second-ranking Cyprus (5.5) and France (4.3), Luxembourg (4) and Britain (3.7).