A drop of 4.7 per cent in the number of births to teenage girls last year has been welcomed by the Health Service Executive’s crisis pregnancy programme.
Official statistics published by the Central Statistics Office reveal there were 1,639 births to teenagers in 2012, down from 1,720 in 2011.
In total, there has been a 47 per cent drop since 2001, when 3,087 babies were born to teens.
This equates to a decrease in the teenage birth rate from 20 per thousand in 2001 to 12 per thousand last year. The majority of teenage births are to girls of 18 and 19, the health authority noted.
Head of health protection Dr Kevin Kelleher said recent survey results showed the number of young people saying that they were getting good quality relationship and sexuality education had increased.
“ It is also showing that the age of first sexual intercourse is stable, at 17 years of age and there are very high rates of contraceptive use reported among young people who are sexually active.”
A total of 26 girls aged 15 or under gave birth in 2012. There were 96 babies born to girls aged 16 and 225 to girls aged 17.
Some 482 babies were born to girls of 18 and 810 wereborn to 19-year-olds.
There were 3,787 babies born to women aged 40-44 , with 805 of those becoming mothers for the first time. A total of 211 babies were born to women aged 45 and over last year.
The greatest number of births was to women in the 30-34 age group, with 26,154 births in this category.
There were 72,225 births registered in 2012 - 37,210 males and 35,015 females. This marks a decrease of 2,425 births on 2011.
Last year’s total number of births is 19.3 per cent higher than in 2002 when 60,521 babies were registered.
The fertility rate was 2.01, slightly lower than the rate of 2.04 in 2011.
A value of 2.1 is generally considered to be the level at which the population would replace itself in the long run, ignoring migration, the CSO said.
Births to mothers of Irish nationality accounted for 76 per cent of births in 2012.
A further 2.2 per cent of births were to women of British nationality, while 1.4 per cent were born to mothers from the EU15 countries excluding Ireland and Britain.
Over 11 per cent of births were to mothers from the other EU accession states (EU27 excluding the EU 15) and 8.2 per cent were from non EU countries. In 1.2 per cent of births , the mother’s nationality was not stated.
There were 21,245 marriages last year - 1, 366 more than in 2011. A total of 2,892 divorces were granted by the courts - up 73 on the previous year.