Ireland in top rankings of large families
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%).
