Ireland is the top country in the European Union for families with three or more children, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency
The top three are Belgium, 18% of families with children have three or more, the same figure as France, just behind Finland (19%) and leader Ireland on 26%.
The poll, taken last year, showed that there are 223 families in the EU, with 65 million of them including children. Of those, 15% are single-parent families.
Of the households across the EU with children, 47% have one child, 40% have two and 13.5% three or more.
At the other end of the scale, only 22% of households have children in Finland and Germany, with 23% in Sweden and 25% in Austria.
The countries least likely to have families of three or more children are Spain and Italy (8%), Portugal (7%) and Bulgaria (5%).
