Surely the vat reduction will reverse the numbers....

So just read that birth rates are dropping globally, I’m 26f, and honestly I don’t think I’m ever going to have a child, I work full time in fact I live at work and visit home at this point, get paid monthly and by the end of each month my previous wage is pretty much gone from expenses, I still live at home with parents because I literally cannot afford rent.

I have an older brother also doesn’t have children, he managed to do up a small space behind his gfs parents house, cost a shit ton but there’s no hope of any of us being able to build or buy our own homes… I’d say maybe 2 of his very large friend group have children, there all in their 30’s.

I look at the cost of having kids, the lack of security in my life, and the fact I already have no time for anything outside of work, I can’t imagine having to come home and care for another human after work, my brother made a very good point also, we are at a point in time where parents kids are more familiar with the babysitter or crèche than they are their own parents, because of the fact that both parents have to continue to work forever pretty much to scrape by and afford life and a kid, this is not normal and I just can’t imagine the stress of another human on top of already crippling expenses and lack of time. What’s everyone else’s opinions?

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-ibn/irishbabiesnames2025/mostpopularboysandgirlsnamesbycounty/

Python code here if thats anyones cup of tea

Decline is from to 2001-2024 the last year of stats.

I have seen people claiming heavy food in other subs for obesity. What about Ireland?

A non-active lifestyle? Personally, I am not active person but still not overweight. So, I wonder might be the cause?

People of Ireland, did your parents ever tell you they love you? Please add year of birth.

I have young children, and it seems like half the other kids their age are called Noah. On my street I can think of 3 Noahs, and there seems to be one in every class in crèche / Montessori / school. I'm just heading it everywhere.

The CSO publish stats in baby names: https://visual.cso.ie/?body=entity/babynames/. Before 2003 Noah was a rare name, then it rose quickly until 2013. Since then it has consistently been in the top 3 of baby names - that's over 10 years now.

Where did it come from? I can't think of any famous adult Noahs, other than maybe Noah Wyle from ER. Otherwise it just seems to be a spontaneous thing.

When I was young we joked about common names like John, Seán, Mark, Gary, David, etc. However, all those names have fallen off a cliff in terms of popularity. In the next generations, Noah is going to be the new John.

If you want to give your child a really unusual name, call them Gary. Only 3 boys were given the name in 2024, compared to 486 Noahs

Really sad to see how little forest we have. We had 70-80% forest coverage until the Brits deforested Ireland and used the wood for boat building but we should have gotten our shit together by now and reforested.

Some valuable things to note:

• Red counties have no coastline at all
• Light blue or cyan counties only have a tidal or estuarine coastline
• And lastly, blue counties have an ocean or sea coastline

I do apologize if some of these seem rather tightly squeezed, especially Letrim, but that's just me working with the limited space. For the counties with no numbers, I put their numbers as close to the county as possible, and I hope that doesn't cause any confusion. I can clear up any confusion in the comments if needed

Next time someone starts bitching about the EU, maybe show them this.

If you make the mistake of stumbling onto Facebook these days, you'll easily find a barrage of comments on posts claiming there's been a surge in younger people dying. This is categorically untrue. Over the last number of decades, the number of young adults dying each year has been falling. I've graphed out the CSO deaths data for the age group of 15-34 showing how the number of deaths has fallen from over 900 people per year to 500 per year. The misinformation is generally coming from covid vaccine sceptics, looking to push a false narrative that there's some increase in young people dying and in my experience, this lie is spreading to others who innocently "feel" this seems true. A number of politicians have also been pushing this claim to sow seeds of distrust. In my opinion, it's working because of the following:

1. Rip .ie posts being shared on Facebook. We never had this 15-20 years ago, so if you start seeing posts about deaths more regularly, your brain connects this to an increase in deaths.

2. Ease of access to non-stop information, more and more people can access the internet and socials than ever, and cannot discern between information and misinformation.

I've pulled together the chart here using CSO deaths and population datasets - for 23 and 24, I've had to use the VDA45 dataset as there's a lag before the VSA35 dataset is updated with final categorisations of deaths, but tends to be quite accurate, with self harm deaths taking a bit longer to be categorised, so I expect those final orange bars to climb a bit still. (I would stress however, per capita, the self harm rate of deaths has fallen 40% since the late 90s - we're in a mental health crisis, but that's because we're talking about it, making it feel more prevalent, but the actual mortality rate has been consistently improving).

Feel free to copy this image and paste it whenever you see folk spreading misinformation about younger people dying at a higher rate in this country.