Irish birth rate falls below 1.4 - far below replacement level

The population is in no danger of collapse.

Ireland is, for many reasons a Goldilock country. It's not too hot, it's not too cold. Not too hard(right), which is why people flock here.

Just bring in a million foreigners, problem solved.

In my parents generation people were married with children by their late 20’s or early 30’s and went on to have a family of 3-4 kids. Now people are more inclined to delay starting a family in favour of travel and experience. “30 is the new 20”, so to speak. Whether that’s better or worse is subjective of course.

The challenges regarding cost/availability of everything doesn’t make having a family easy. Housing and childcare are huge issues.

Irish society makes life very difficult for young parents, and for mothers in particular. It’s no surprise that fewer of them are having children.

You can either (try to) bring back the ban on contraception and divorce or you could try to fix issues like housing, childcare and work discrimination.

But it may already be too late: the near-complete failure of China’s removal of the one child ban to raise their birth rates suggests that once people’s mindset has adapted to not having/wanting babies, it’s very hard to change that back.

Of the people in my work circle, the majority who had children had them in their late 30s or older. Some of the men were in their 50s and women early-mid forties. When you start having children at this age, you'll be having one or two. As someone who was born into this scenario, the upside is that your parents will tend to be relatively financially comfortable but there are big downsides too. You can easily end up dealing with illness and death of parents before you've come close to establishing a career and life for yourself. This affects your own ability to have children.

The population is increasing. Check the census figures for the last few.

We should encourage the right people to have children... that being workers, young working couples before they need IVF

But that would take a major shift in several policies, the big issue is House prices. House prices are unsustainable, many working couple living with parents. They earn too much to get council properties or affordable property but have to save well into their 30's to get a house by which time fertility rates drops

Recently in Dublin 2300 applied for 46 apartment's in Dublin for "key" workers. I'd love to see how many people who never contributed to society in a meaningful way got council property in Dublin areas that would be ideal for workers to live in.

Young workers commute 100's of KM a day because they can only barely afford homes in Carlow and are stressed to bit saving to cover costs while planning for kids they can't afford. Or they are living in mum and dads box-room before taking on the lifetime commute.

Young working people are screwed in this county, unfortunately they are not in a position to screw each other and make more future workers.

It's increasing but artifically so through the wholesale importing of refugees and asylum seekers who then (once they stay long enough and get citizenship - because that's all you need to do in this country!) bring the rest of the family with them.

That's fine except that evidence elsewhere suggests that these refugees will be generally less productive than the locals and more likely to be a drain on the public purse than a benefit, and so while they may have more kids (as historically our own welfare class do), the natives who are paying for all this and struggling to provide for themselves never mind (potential) offspring are left behind.

None of this matters of course if you are a globalist or see nationality and identity as a "bad thing" to be diluted in favour of the multiculturalism idea(l)/ideology, but even though this country is changing rapidly in the last 5/6 years in particular, it's not particularly for the better.

Not all of that is the fault of inward migration of course, but the pressure it's putting on a society that was already unable (for various reasons) to deal with long-standing social, economic and infrastructural issues has been immense and the negative effects - division, polarisation, stretched resources and favouritism/bypassing of rules others must abide by, out-of-touch politicians playing to this demographic for kudos internationally rather than dealing with the aforementioned existing problems, etc etc - mean that the natives are even further discouraged to start families or even remain in the country in some/many cases.

The problem now is that this shift is irrevesible and gathering pace thanks to short-sightedness, greed and inertia. In anoher decade or two many of us won't recognise the country we grew up in because of all of the above mentioned issues and problem that will be exacerbated as time goes on and the failure to properly address it when we had the chance.

You mean, another million foreigners.

TBF to the past government they have invested a lot in subsidies for children, increasing children's allowance, pre school subsidies, free meals and books, etc. We also have pretty generous maternity and paternity leave. The pay rates maybe need to be looked at.

We also have a work culture that is pretty sympathetic to time off in the main.

More needs to be done, but that will probably require cuts elsewhere or a rise in taxation.

There was always going to be a changeover from banning women from the Civil Service once they got married to where we are now.

…patience op, just wait till a sh1te load of us start retiring, and we then end up with too many retirees in the country, compared to workers, then the fun will begin!

…we re not gonna encourage people to have more kids, that ship has sank, the only real solution is immigration, but shur best of luck encouraging that one now!

People point to housing, cost of childcare etc for a falling birthrate but while important I think it misses the main reason. Children are work, very hard work and to add to that massive expectations and requirements are placed on modern parents. It's not like years ago when parents could let children essentially rear themselves.

Couples know that children place a massive burden and limitation on their own freedom. Even if the state provided completely free childcare, the birthrate would be much the same.

This is the messaging I'm talking about. We should embrace the positives children bring, not paint them as hard word and a negative. Our children and youth literally are our future, and we need to encourage that mindset.

It is most definitely hyperbole. Claiming government policy is cause the drop in the birth rate is laughable. The birth rate has been falling for decades. How many kids do you have? you parents? Grandparents? For the vast majority, there's a significantly decline across those generations.

Not only that, but a large part of the population growth is immigration. So you'd need to know rate among those the irish population to make and claims of irish cultural specifically.

 They need to see having a family isn't a burden.

Or, and this might blow you mind, you need to see that having children is not an obligation.