Press Statement

Preasráiteas

31 October 2017

The CSO today releases the Vital Statistics Annual Report for 2015

Go to release: Vital Statistics Annual Report 2015

The CSO today (31^st October 2017) releases the Vital Statistics Annual Report 2015. Commenting on the report, Carol Anne Hennessy, Statistician, said: “The number of births has fallen by 12.8% since 2010 and 2.6% since 2014. There were 65,536 live births in Ireland in 2015 with 33,480 males and 32,056 females. However, the 2015 total is 6.8% higher than 10 years previously (2005) when there were 61,372 live births.

The average age of mothers for births that occurred in 2015 was 32.5 years. Mothers under 30 accounted for 29.3% of births in 2015 compared with ten years previously (2005) when mothers (of stated age) under 30 accounted for 38.9% of births.

Over 1 in three (36.5%) of all births were outside of marriage/civil partnership in 2015. The comparable figure, 30 years earlier, in 1985 was 8.5%.

There were 1,199 births to mothers under 20 years in 2015, down from 2,406 in 2005, a decrease of 50.2%.

The number of maternities which resulted in multiple live births in 2015 was 1,228 consisting of 1,196 sets of twins, 31 sets of triplets and 1 set of quadruplets. Over the past 25 years, the twinning rate has increased significantly – from a low of 11.7 in 1991, to a high of 18.7 in 2013 and down slightly to 18.6 in 2015.

There were 30,127 deaths in Ireland in 2015, an increase of 875 on the 2014 figure. There were 8,877 or 29.5% of deaths attributed to malignant neoplasms, 9,371 or 31.1% of deaths were attributed to diseases of the circulatory system, while deaths from diseases of the respiratory system in 2015 numbered 3,865 or 12.8% of all deaths.

Suicide accounted for 1.4% (425) of all deaths in 2015, 78.8% (335) of which were male.

There were 225 deaths of infants aged less than one year in 2015, giving an infant mortality rate of 3.4 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 3.3 in 2014. Neonatal deaths are deaths of infants at ages under 4 weeks. There were 174 neonatal deaths registered in 2015, a neonatal mortality rate of 2.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. Over a third (38.2%) of all infant deaths occurred within the first day of birth while 63.1% occurred within the first week. Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities accounted for 44.4% of infant deaths, while certain conditions originating in the perinatal period accounted for 45.8% of infant deaths in 2015.

The natural increase (births minus deaths) in 2015 was 35,409, a decrease of 6.9% on the 2014 figure. The natural increase 10 years previously in 2005 was 33,112, almost 6.5% less than the 2015 figure”.

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