LAST YEAR’S record births bodes well for “the recovery”. Over 75,000 new inhabitants of the State means, in crude terms, around 50,000 of them seeking new homes in another 20 years or so – allowing for emigration, single status, natural wastage and the few who may enter religious life.

Depending on which expert you care to believe – and there have been varying opinions this week – that should still place a demand on new housing and residential units by 2020. Given the existing glut of teenagers who by then will have become buyers of first homes, are we being fanciful to assume the current expansion of less than 20,000 units per year will just about meet the increase in young home owners?

Demographic projection is as inexact a science as, say, economic forecasting. Both are inextricably bound in dependency. Many animal studies, for instance, show population growth linked to the availability of food and shelter. Those last two we‘ve had in abundance during the past decade, to judge from waddling obesity levels and crammed maternity wards.

So, in an unfashionable projection of our own, we say roll on the Jack and Evas to inhabit the Ireland Inc that awaits ye.