Over one-fifth of births in Ireland in 2021 were to foreign mothers, statistics released by the country’s government have shown.
More than 22 per cent of children born within the Irish state in the year 2021 had a foreign mother, official government statistics released on Thursday showed.
According to data released by Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO), over 10 per cent of new mothers were from other countries across the EU, while an additional two per cent are listed as having UK citizenship.
Meanwhile, just shy of ten per cent of children are recorded as being born to mothers who have nationalities from outside the EU and UK.
Of all these births, a significant majority of over 58 per cent were recorded as occurring from within a marriage, though the percentage number of children born outside wedlock has risen slightly when compared to the previous year.
It comes as countries across Europe struggle to maintain their birthrate, with rapidly ageing populations on the continent often being used by talking heads to push for more and more immigration.
While 2021 did see a slight rise in the number of births when compared to 2020, overall, the country is seeing a collapse in the number of children born each year, with only 58,443 being born last year compared to 74,033 in 2011.
In this sense, Ireland is similar to its European neighbours, many of whom have begun to seriously struggle with collapsing birthrates over the last number of decades.
Nations like the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain have all seen their own birthrates plummet over the Chinese Coronavirus lockdown, with other European states implementing pro-family policies in the hopes of encouraging its citizenry to have more children.
Some more cosmopolitan-minded people, however, may be having different ideas, with one AI researcher suggesting that future generations will soon use computer-generated children living in a digital “metaverse” to replace real-life offspring.
This generation of “Tamagotchi Children” lovers will adopt the tech instead of having kids of their own partly over fears to do with the overpopulation of planet Earth, the researcher went on to claim.
“Virtual children may seem like a giant leap from where we are now, but within 50 years technology will have advanced to such an extent that babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world,” she said.
“As the metaverse evolves, I can see virtual children becoming an accepted and fully embraced part of society in much of the developed world,” she continued. “We’re already well on our way to creating the Tamagotchi generation which, for all intents and purposes, will be ‘real’ to their parents.”