Dublin has developed from a largely mono-cultural society into an international and cosmopolitan capital in the past decade or so. Population structures started to shift as the Celtic Tiger sank its claws deep into the old values. As marriage rates dropped in the 1990s, and divorce was legalised following a referendum in 1995, the cornerstone of Irish society, the family, seemed under threat. Yet, although birth rates reached an all time low in 2005 at 14.8 per thousand of the population and the number of divorces increased from 12.7 per thousand of the population to a rate of 16% from 2003 to 2004, Ireland is neither an isolated case in the European Union nor is it the country which experienced the most drastic changes. In fact, some of the most problematic figures have now either stabilised or actually reversed their trends.

Compared to other European countries, Ireland’s divorce rate remains low and its marriage rate has now stabilised at 5.2 per thousand. In line with their neighbours, the Irish now marry later, with the average age being 28.4 years for women and 33.1 for men. In 2006, there were 1,053,180 family units in Ireland with a total of 1,486,431 children, including 1,854 families with seven children.
In general, population numbers are on the rise. The 2006 census put the population of County Dublin just shy of 1.2 million, of which Dublin City claimed 506,211. The ratio of male to female is pretty balanced, with slightly more women than men. The average life expectancy is slowly rising too. In 2002, the average age for women was 80.3 years, and 75.1 for men, slightly below EU averages.