Urban areas such as Dublin and Galway city have the lowest fertility rates in Ireland, while Carrick-on-Shannon in Co Leitrim has the highest, according to new data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
On Wednesday, the CSO published a new report, titled births and deaths at local electoral areas (LEA) 2021.
It found there were 60,575 births in Ireland that year, with the highest number being in Dublin’s north inner city LEA at 755.
Nationally, the fertility rate stood at 47.5 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 49 in 2021, though this varied quite significantly between areas.
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The CSO defined the fertility rate as the number of births by women aged 15 to 49, relative to the population of women in this age bracket.
This differs from the birth rate, which looks at the entire population in an area, while the fertility rate only focuses on women.
Carrick-On-Shannon in Co Leitrim (61.2), Enniscorthy in Co Wexford (60.8), and Ballybay-Clones in Co Monaghan (60.6) were the LEAs with the highest general fertility rate in 2021.
Urban LEAs such as Dublin’s Southeast Inner City, (29.8), Galway City Central (30.5), and Dublin’s North Inner City (31.1) had the lowest general fertility rate.
Meanwhile, there were 34,844 deaths across Ireland that year. Of these, Clontarf, in Dublin city had the highest proportion of deaths at 1.5 per cent, or 528 deaths, while Leixlip in Co Kildare at the lowest number of deaths at 65.
Belmullet in Co Mayo was the LEA with the highest crude death rate – the number of deaths divided by the population in an area – per 1,000 at 13.2, while Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart, Fingal recorded the lowest at 2.1.
In terms of cause of death, Castleisland, Co Kerry had the highest crude death rate of diseases of the circulatory system at 368 per 100,000, while Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart, Fingal had the lowest at 48.7 for this cause of death.
Just over 4.5 per cent of deaths which occurred nationally in 2021 were due to external causes such as accidents, suicides, assaults, and other external factors.
In LEAs such as Galway City East, (11.3 per cent), southeast inner city (10.8 per cent), north inner city Dublin (10.5 per cent), Clane, Co Kildare (10.3 per cent), and Ongar in Fingal (10.1 per cent), this cause of death accounted for one in ten deaths.
In Belmullet, Co Mayo, Glenties in Co Donegal and Bantry-west Cork, there were more deaths than births in 2021.
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