The average age at which all Irish women, including single women, are giving birth is continuing to rise, according to latest figures.
The latest report on perinatal statistics from the ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) states that the average age of mothers giving birth increased from 29.11 years in 1991 to 30.58 years in 2003, the latest year for which complete figures are available.
Single mothers accounted for 30 per cent of all the women giving birth in 2003 compared with 15 per cent in 1991 and the average age of single mothers in 2003 was 26 years compared with an average age of 22 years in 1991.
The trend for more babies to be born by Caesarean section also continued in 2003. "Delivery by Caesarean section was estimated at 24.2 per cent of all live births in 2003, compared with 22.4 per cent in 2002 and 20.4 per cent in 1999," the report states.
The Caesarean section rate in 1991 was 11.75 per cent.
The report also indicates that breastfeeding rates are improving but it is older mothers who are more likely to breastfeed.
"The trend in the breastfeeding rate continues to be upward at 41.3 per cent in 2003 compared with 41.1 per cent in 2002," it says.
But homebirths seem to be on the wane. There were 236 home births attended by independent domiciliary midwives in 2003 compared with 288 in 2002.
There were a total of 61,989 births recorded in the State in 2003, an increase of 1.8 per cent since 2002 and 14.1 per cent since 1999. Some 873 of these were twin births and 26 triplet births.
The report says Ireland continued to have the highest birth rate of any of the 25 EU countries at 15.5 per 1,000 population in 2003. The country with the next highest birth rate is France (12.7), followed by the Netherlands (12.3) and Denmark (12).
Of the 59,837 singleton live births in 2003, just 14 were born to under 15-year-olds while more than 2,000 were born to women aged 40-44 years and 65 were born to women aged 45 years and over.
Some 18,126 of these children were born to single mothers, more than 40,000 of them were born to married women, 61 to women who were widowed, 664 to separated women and 196 to women who were divorced.
There were no multiple births to mothers under 15 years of age, but of the 1,798 multiple live births there were 43 among teenagers aged 15-19 years. There were also 58 multiple births to women aged 40-44 years and six to women aged 45 years and over.
Some 1,377 of the multiple births were among married women, 394 among single women, two to widowed women, 16 to separated and six to divorced women.
The figures also show that the average length of stay for mothers and their infants in maternity hospitals after giving birth continued to decline in 2003. The average length of stay of mothers fell from 4.7 days in 1999 to four days in 2003.
There were 375 stillbirths recorded in 2003, slightly up on previous years. There were also 177 early neonatal deaths (live born babies who die within the first seven days of life), which also represents a slight increase.
The numbers of neonatal deaths undergoing postmortem also fell in 2003.
The perinatal mortality rate, recorded at 7.1 per 1,000 births, is lower than that of the UK and a number of eastern European countries but higher than that of countries such as Sweden and Luxembourg.
The figures also highlight the problem in 2003 of women turning up "unbooked" at maternity hospitals to give birth. There were 1,427 births of singletons and 49 multiple births which had been unbooked in 2003.
Some 745 mothers who had singletons and 27 women who had multiple births had received no antenatal care.
No mothers died giving birth in 2003.
Sheelagh Bonham, author of the report, said the reason the figures were so out of date was that it took time to get complete data from all hospitals.
But she said the ESRI would be in a position to publish the 2004 figures in a few months.
Reports from now on will also have data on the nationality of each newborn's parents.