Planning for Ireland’s falling fertility rate is now a strategic issue facing the new Government, according to a leading economist. The fertility rate is now 1.5. The level needed to keep your population level without immigration is 2.1.

Writing in the Irish Times, John Fitzgerald said society is rapidly ageing, while birth rates continue to drop steadily. The CSO projects that by 2057 around 30pc of the population will be over 65, double the present level, even with high immigration.

“This means . . . a lower share of people of working age will be supporting a growing number of pensioners and their health and care needs”.

He noted that there is still a “limited understanding” of what factors are driving fertility decline, adding that most countries that have tried to halt the trend have looked to policies such as better child benefits or ones that make it easier to combine a career and family life such as better childcare and parental leave.

However, citing the Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin, he said that such measures, while good for women’s and children’s health, had little impact on arresting the decline in birth rates.