The birth rate dropped by almost 10pc during the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, new figures reveal.

Data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed that births decreased by 1,522 in the first three months of 2020.

In the first quarter of 2019, there were 15,893 babies born in Ireland while in the same period this year there were only 14,371 births.

The birth rate stood at 11.7 per thousand in the population, the lowest ever on record.

This corresponds to a fertility rate of 1.77, where 2.1 is needed to achieve population replacement.

Senior lecturer at the UCD Smurfit School of Business, Jim Power, said the decline in births is “one of the biggest challenges facing the country” as there won’t be enough income to pay for pensions. However, he told the Irish Daily Mail that having more children was “not going to happen”.

He said the pension age will have to be raised, or there will have to be a lot of inward migration to make up the difference.

“Unfortunately, many of our political leaders just don’t have the political strength to state the bleeding obvious—it’s a time bomb ticking away.”