It seems unlikely now that Ireland’s population will ever exceed pre-Famine levels. According to the 1841 census, there were 8.17 million people on the island. By 1845, when the Famine began, that number was approximately 8.5 million, dropping to 6.5 million by 1851.
Over recent years, it has been forecast that the island of Ireland would soon exceed that 1841 figure. By 2022 the population of this island was approximately 7.2 million (5.35 million in the Republic, according to the 2022 census, and 1.91 million in Northern Ireland, according to the 2021 census).
Since then, all has changed. Between 2015 and 2025, births on the island of Ireland fell 18.8 per cent, with a drop of 17.9 per cent in the Republic and 21.3 per cent in Northern Ireland.
We’re going backwards, population-wise.
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In the Republic, births fell from 65,909 in 2015 to 54,125 in 2025. Fertility rates on the island are now 1.5, well below the replacement level of 2.1. We are not unique.
Worldwide, more than half of all countries show fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman, with 198 out of 204 countries projected – in an analysis by British medical journal The Lancet and the United Kingdom’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation – to be below replacement levels by 2100.
So, within 75 years, the issue worldwide will be depopulation. Whatever happened “the population explosion” and all the alarms that went with that? “Stopped short, never to go again,” like Johnny Cash’s grandfather’s clock.
And the trend has been there for decades. According to 2024 figures – from the UN World Population Prospects – growth in global population peaked six decades ago. In 1963 it was more than 2 per cent per year. It had dropped to less than 1 per cent by 2020.
UN researchers expect growth rates to continue falling until the end of this century, leading to a decline in growth rates and a shrinking global population – the first global decline in population since the Black Death of the 14th century.
Meanwhile, the world’s population will grow at an average 0.4 per cent per year. That’s another estimated two billion people before there is a decline, or a 25 per cent increase on the world’s current population, to more than 10 billion people.
Population, from Latin populus, for “a people”.
