One in eight first-time mothers over 35

More than one in eight women who gave birth to their first child in the first three months of this year was aged 35 or over, according to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Women aged 30 and over gave birth to almost 60 per cent of the 15,958 babies born between January 1st and March 31st this year. For 44 per cent of those women, it was their first birth. A quarter of mothers were aged 35 and over, with 13.6 per cent of those (more than one in eight) having their first child.

At the other end of the scale 16 girls aged 15 and under gave birth in the first quarter of the year. For all these girls it was their first birth. Figures for the whole of 2005 showed that two girls aged 15 and under gave birth to their second child last year.

The latest CSO statistics on births, deaths and marriages show that 108 babies were born to 17-year-old girls in the first quarter of the year and one 17-year-old gave birth to her fourth child. A total of 649 births in the first quarter were to teenage mothers, 42 of whom were married. Limerick city continues to have the highest percentage of unmarried mothers, with 51.9 per cent of all births taking place outside marriage.

The lowest percentage of births outside marriage was Leitrim, where only 21.2 per cent of mothers were unmarried. The oldest mothers in the country live in Roscommon, where the average age of women giving birth was 32.6 years. The youngest mothers were in Limerick city, where the average age was 29.2 years.

Limerick city is the only part of the State where births outside marriage exceed 50 per cent. The area with the next highest percentage of births to unmarried mothers was Dublin city with 49.9 per cent, Waterford city with 46.6 per cent and South Dublin with 45.2 per cent. Some 624 more babies were born in the first quarter of this year than in the same period last year.

Death rates continue to fall, with 7,320 deaths registered in the first quarter of this year, compared with 7,288 in the first quarter of 2005. More than four in every five deaths were from diseases of the circulatory system, cancer or diseases of the respiratory system.

The natural increase (births minus deaths) was 8,638 in the first quarter of the year, 656 higher than in 2005. There were 3,267 marriages registered, 358 more than in the first quarter of 2005.