Births in Ireland drop 13.5pc as EU hits a record low

9th March 2024

According to EU statistics agency Eurostat, the number of births in the bloc fell below four million for the first time on record in 2022 when 3.88 million children were born. The peak year was 1964 when 6.8 million were born.

Ireland had the steepest decline in fertility rates in 2022, falling from 1.78 live births per woman to 1.54 in a year − a drop of 13.5pc. Greece and Estonia recorded similar double-figure drops in fertility rates.

The decline can be partly explained by a brief ‘baby boom’ after the Covid pandemic, with fertility rates reaching a five-year high in Ireland in 2021 and increasing across the EU as a whole. The that ‘high’ was still well below replacement levels of 2.1 babies per couple.

In 2020, when Covid hit, 55,959 babies were born in Ireland, which rose to 60,553 in 2021. In 2022, that dropped to 54,411 births.

Since 2011, the fertility rate here has decreased from 2.03 births per woman to 1.54.

The fertility rate was 1.46 live births per woman in the EU in 2022, a fall of 4.6pc and the first time on record it has dipped below 1.5.