Irish mothers are older than the EU average but they still end up having more children. Photograph: AJ Watt/Getty Images
In demography, small differences can, in fact, be very large. So the fact that women giving birth in Ireland are a couple of years older than the EU average is significant. Figures for 2023 – the latest complete EU data – show that the average age of a woman giving birth here was 33.2, the highest in the EU and two years above the EU average of 31.2.
Looking at the average for first births, Ireland is at 31.6 – up from 26 in the mid-1980s – compared with the EU average at 29.8. The latest Central Statistics Office figures show that the Irish figures have not changed much in the meantime.
But the interesting thing in Ireland is that, despite a late start, Irish mothers tend to “catch up” with those elsewhere in Europe. On current trends, women in Ireland have, on average, 1.5 children (this is called the fertility rate), compared with the EU average of 1.38.
Ireland, along with Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Sweden and some others, is part of a group of EU countries where both the total fertility rate and th
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