Good old Ireland . . . bringing up the rear, as always, when it comes to investigating the body, or pleasure, or any experience which has not been pre-sorted according to hierarchies of class and gender importance. This was the first comprehensive study since the foundation of the Irish state, whereas when did Kinsey start establishing some private truths about America . . . half a century ago? More? No wonder some truly astonishing changes have been revealed.

What do the priests make, for example, of the slide from 71% of the population, 30 years ago, believing that sex before marriage is always a sin, to 6% now? That's not a decline:

that's abandonment. It bears out what I've always thought . . . that the teachings of the Catholic church, while the church itself is much-loved and needed and an intrinsic part of our tribal identity, aren't even considered when they clash with self-interest. On a spectrum from making false insurance claims to providing hiding places for IRA killers, the adults do what they do; and now, it seems, the 17-year olds do what they do, too.

My generation had to handle sexuality as best it could in the face of savagely punitive authorities. In that we belonged to a continuum of repression that stretched so far back that it seemed to define Ireland. For as long as anyone could remember, girls who got pregnant before marriage were hunted out of the community, without pity. To this day I can't bear to think about some of the suffering I witnessed then. So my first reaction to reading this survey was to go into a church and thank whoever or whatever brings about societal change that those days are over.

Not, by the way, that I approve of 17-year olds having sex. I think it's far too intimate a thing to share with some hottie picked up at a disco. And I think there should be a new sin called risking having a baby just because the two of you are too excited and shy to check that one of you is using contraception. Leaving the baby aside . . . babies manage to thrive, it seems, no matter what . . . a young person's life is inclined to stop dead when they take on the responsibility of parenting. They drop out, for example, from education.

And one of the most unexpected things this study does is provide a motivation for staying in education. I was attracted to the section on frequency of sex because I've always been struck by how regret for moderation surfaces on the deathbed. The poet Keats, who had much else undone to mourn for, said about the girl he loved, "I should have had her while I was well." John Betjeman said his main wish, looking back at his life, was that he'd had more sex. W B Yeats, as he aged, did everything he could to stay in touch with all forms of creativity (that's putting it very genteelly). And if having lots of sex is an aim in life then it's a good idea to stay in school. "There is evidence, " this study says, "of a greater frequency of sex among people with higher educational qualifications".

You still won't be at it as often as some of the young, who manage to have sex daily.

But then, they probably have a much larger pool of partners to choose from than you do.

"The availability of partners is the crucial factor in how often you have sex, " so any amount of PhDs or even professorships won't help if you live in semi-retirement under the eye of one, watchful spouse.

The real surprise of this study, for me, was the figure for satisfaction. I've always associated sex with difficulty . . . that it is difficult to find the right partner and then difficult to reach a happy intimacy with them and then difficult to keep the intimacy going through all the many events of a busy life.

And literature could hardly exist without accounts of unwise passion and passion frustrated and intense sexual loneliness and tragic misalliance. But along comes this survey to tell us that no less than 70% of Irish women and 57% of Irish men are satisfied with their sex-lives. That's very hard to believe. I mean, that's probably more than are satisfied with the performance of the Ireland soccer team or Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach.

The suspicion can't but arise that they're satisfied with the first of these . . . as they are perhaps with the second and the third . . .

because they have low expectations. But to join in the general cheer . . . what's wrong with that?

To be reasonably pleased with whatever hand life has dealt you, sexwise, is a fine, sensible thing to be. And it's very good for your health. Think of all the great romantic heroes and heroines who risked their all for a perfection of bliss. Where did they end up? Right.

Dead. They ended up (a) brokenhearted and (b) dead.