Over 19,000 babies were born in the first 3 months of this year.
Official records show this was 26% higher than the same time 9 years ago.
40% of births in the first 3 months of 2012 were to first time mothers.
While 35% of babies were born outside of marriage.
Meanwhile the number of foreign nationals living in Ireland jumped 30% between 2006 and 2011.
These are just some of findings the 2011 Census which have been released today by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
More than 544,000 non-Irish nationals were living in Ireland at the time of the census in April of last year and they represented 199 different nations.
The figures show the number of Polish people living here soared by nearly 94% in the previous 5 years to over 112,000.
This makes them the largest non-Irish community in the country.
Foreign nationals made up just over 15% of the workforce at the time of the Census while over 43% of that group consisted of Polish and British nationals.
Dublin City (88,038 persons), Fingal (49,517) and Cork county (42,886) had the highest number of foreign nationals living in their areas.
While counties Longford and Leitrim had the lowest figures. standing at 3,703 and 5,477 respectively.
Galway city was the most multi-cultural area with 19.4% of residents listed as non-Irish.
Separately – perhaps as a sign of increased emigration – there were 241,221 Irish nationals born outside the State.
The vast majority (178,945) were born in the UK, followed by the USA (16,703), Australia (3,220), Canada (2,524) and South Africa (2,440).
Deirdre Cullen is a senior statistician at the CSO.
“This report provides further analysis of the non-Irish population living in Ireland at the time of the last census” she said.
“Ireland has become an increasingly diverse society over the past decade and the different nationalities that make up the population of Ireland have an increasingly important impact on the economy and society”.
This report provides yet more analysis and results from census 2011 on this important group” she added.
Read the report in full href="http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/census2011profile6/Profile%206%20Migration%20and%20Diversity%20entire%20doc.pdf">here
Post compiled by Jack Quann | You can follow Jack on Twitter: href="https://twitter.com/jqbilbao">@jqbilbao
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