Experts call for fertility warning drive

WIDESPREAD concern among fertility experts that women are leaving it too late to have children has led to calls for a national fertility awareness campaign, beginning in the classroom.

The support for an awareness-raising campaign comes at a time when births to first-time mothers are at a 50-year high and the average age of mothers has risen to 31.4.

Experts in reproductive medicine – who took part in an Irish Examiner investigation of treatments, costs and success rates at fertility clinics around the country – agree women need to be made aware they have a finite number of eggs and that technology has not advanced enough to make age irrelevant when it comes to having children.