Wedded Bliss? Eh…Don’t Think So! CSO Reveals Irish Divorce Rates Have Risen by 800%

Are you happily married or engaged to be wed in the future? Eh…if so you might not want to read the following because it could put a serious dampener on your wedding/soon-to-be-wedded bliss.

According to reports today, the number of marriages ending in divorce in Ireland has jumped by a whopping 800 per cent in the past 15 years. Seriously. Apparently 87,770 Irish couples have called it quits and moved on from their other half.

The figures, which were released by the Central Statistics Office, show that the number of married people last year was 1,708,604 compared with 1,565,016 five years earlier – an increase of 10 per cent overall. However, the figures also revealed that the proportion of the population who were divorced grew from 0.4 per cent in 1996 to 2.4 per cent.

There was also an increase of nearly 550 per cent in those marrying again after a divorce or an annulment.

The CSO stated that men were much more likely to remarry after a divorce, with 39 per cent saying ‘I do’ twice, but only 28 per cent of women walked down the aisle again.

Not all marriages result in happily ever after.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Apparently country couples are having larger families, with the average number of children being 1.5 in comparison with the 1.3 children city dwellers have. Couples that live together have an average of 1.74 kids, while married couples had 2.09 children

The CSO also revealed that the age of 32 was when married women tended to outnumber single women, meanwhile for men, the average age was 34.