More than 62,000 births were registered in Ireland last year and over 4,200 of these were to women over the age of 40, new statistics have shown.

According to the Central Statistics Office's Vital Statistics Yearly Summary 2017, a total of 62, 053 births were registered last year, representing an annual birth rate of 12.9 per 1,000 of the population. In 2007, this figure was 16.1 per 1,000 population.

The average age of first-time mothers in 2017 was 31.0 years, up 0.1 years from 2016. The overall average age of mothers giving birth in Ireland was 32.8 years, up from 32.7 years in 2016 and 31.1 years in 2007.

There were 4,242 births to women over the age of 40 last year and 309 were to women aged 45 or older.

A total of 1,041 teenagers gave birth last year and of these, 19 were under the age of 16. This figure was welcomed by the HSE Sexual Health and Crisis Pregnancy Programme, which pointed out that births to teenagers have fallen from 3,087 in 2001 to 1,041 in 2017 - a 66% drop in 16 years.

The figures also showed that overall, 37% of births were outside of marriage and 77% were to mothers of Irish nationality.

Meanwhile, the yearly summary showed that 30,484 deaths were registered in 2017, over 80% of which occurred in people aged 65 and older.

The majority of deaths were from cancer, diseases of the circulatory system and diseases of the respiratory system. Just over 4% of all deaths were due to accidents, suicide and other external causes, such as murder.

There were 174 infant deaths registered - these are children under the age of 12 months, and 138 neonatal deaths - these are children under the age of four weeks.

The statistics also show that there were 22,021 marriages registered in 2017, 759 of which were same-sex marriages.