Figures from the 2015 Vital Statistics Report were released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Tuesday.
The average age of Irish mothers in 2015 was 32.5 years and the number of births in Ireland has fallen by 12.8% since 2010, according to the CSO’s 2015 Vital Statistics Report.
In total, there were 65,536 live births in Ireland in 2015 (33,480 males and 32,056 females), an increase of 6.8% on the figures for 2005, but a decrease of 12.8% compared to 2010 and 2.6% compared to 2014.
Mothers under 30 accounted for 29.3% of births in 2015, compared with ten years previously, when mothers under 30 accounted for 38.9% of total births.
There was also a significant decrease in the number of births by teenage mothers in 2015 (1,199), just under half the number of births by women under the age of 20 in 2005 (2,406).
Image via cso.ie
Over one in three of all births (36.5%) were outside of marriage or civil partnership in Ireland two years ago, a giant leap on the same figure from 1985, when just 8.5% of all births were outside of marriage or civil partnership.
The report also revealed that, in total, 30,127 people died in Ireland in 2015, 875 more than in 2014.
Heart disease and cancer were cited as the biggest causes of death, with 29.5% of deaths attributed to malignant neoplasms, 31.1% of deaths attributed to diseases of the circulatory system and deaths from diseases of the respiratory system accounting for 12.8% of all deaths.
Suicide, meanwhile, accounted for 1.4% (425) of all deaths in 2015, 78.8% (335) of which were male.
You can read the report in full here.
