Ireland’s fertility rate is projected to decline even further below replacement rate for the foreseeable future, to as low as 1.3, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

This analysis was included in the CSO’s Population and Labour Force Projections which looks at potential population growth scenarios over the time period of 2023 – 2057.

The total fertility rate (TFR) was as high as 4.03 in 1965 but it has fallen steadily thereafter. It reached a low of 1.65 in 2020, increased to 1.73 in 2021, before dropping to 1.55 in 2022.

A figure of 2.1 is required for the population to simply hold steady.

However, based on their analysis, the Expert Group believes that the total fertility rate “will decrease from 1.55 to 1.3 by 2037 and then stabilise at this level until the end of the projection period in 2057”.

The group considered three scenarios for population growth, depending on whether there is high, medium or low net inward migration.

While the population by 2057 will grow to 7.005 million, 6.446 million or 5.734 million persons respectively, for each of the three scenarios “there appears to be a change from natural increase (i.e. more births than deaths within the population) in the population to a natural decrease (i.e. more deaths than births) in the population by the 2040’s”.