The number of births in Ireland has dropped by 15.1% since 2010, but the rate of twins has increased significantly, according to new figures released by the Central Statistics Office.
The rate of twins being born, or twinning rate, went from 11.7 per 1,000 births to 19 in the 25 years between 1991 and 2016.
There were 63,841 live births in Ireland in 2016: 32,709 males and 31,132 females.
In 2016, the number of multiple live births was 1,215, consisting of 1,189 sets of twins, 24 sets of triplets and two sets of quadruplets.
The CSO figures, released in the Vital Statistics Annual Report for 2016, found that the average age of mothers continues to rise.
That year, the average age of mothers was 32.7 years.
Over a third (36.6%) of all births were outside marriage or civil partnerships in 2016. The comparable figure in 1986 - 30 years earlier - was 9.6%.
The number of births to teenage mothers has more than halved in ten years.
At the other end of life, just over 30,000 people died in 2016, more than half the number of births.
Circulatory disease and cancer are the biggest causes of death in Ireland, the figures show.
Over 1.4% of all deaths were due to suicide in 2016, four-fifths of which were males.
There were 194 infant deaths in 2016, most of which occurred within the first week of life.
