There has been a major drop in the death rate of infants around the time of birth in Ireland.

The report from the ESRI shows that the perinatal mortality rate was 6.1 per 1,000 live births and stillbirths in  2011 compared with 6.8 per 1,000 in 2010, a reduction of over 10%.

Compared with 2002, when the perinatal mortality rate was 8.4 per 1,000 live births and stillbirths, the 2011 rate shows a drop of 27%.

The stillbirth rate is estimated at 4.0 per 1,000 live births and stillbirths in 2011 compared with 5.6 per 1,000 live births and stillbirths in 2002 - a reduction of 29% over a decade.

The report shows that a small decline in birth numbers is continuing, with 74,377 births in 2011 compared with 75,600 births in 2010. This represents a reduction of 1.6% since 2010 and 2.2% since the peak in 2009.

However, at 16.2 per 1,000 population, Ireland still has the the highest birth rate of any EU country. The second highest EU birth rate was reported for the UK, at 12.9 per 1,000 population.

Almost 29% of women giving birth were aged 35 years or older - just 2% of women giving birth were aged 19 years or less.

One-in-three of births were to single mothers with an average age of 28.3 years, which compares with 30% and 25.7 years in 2002.

Our breastfeeding rates have increased slightly - at the point of discharge from hospital or by midwife attending a home birth, almost 47% of all babies were exclusively breastfed in 2011 compared with 46% in 2010 and 41% in 2002.

The report says when examined by nationality, the breastfeeding rate for babies born to Irish mothers the is 40%, compared with over 75% for babies born to mothers from Europe and Australia.

There were 168 home births attended by independent domiciliary midwives in 2011 compared with 288 in 2002.