Press Statement

Preasráiteas

14 February 2018

The number of people aged 65 and over in Ireland grew by more than a third (39.2%) between 2008 and 2018

Go to release: Measuring Ireland's Progress 2017

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (14 February 2019) published Measuring Ireland’s Progress 2017, which includes over sixty indicators that highlight key trends in Irish society while drawing comparisons over time and in a European context.

Commenting on the report, Declan Smyth, Senior Statistician, said: “Just over a third (36.6%) of all Irish births in 2016 were outside marriage, below the EU average of 42.6%. In the same year, Ireland had the third highest fertility rate in the EU, at 1.81, though all EU countries had a fertility rate below the theoretical replacement rate of 2.1.
The number of people aged 65 and over in Ireland grew by 39.2% between 2008 and 2018, an increase of 189,700 persons.

Prices in Ireland were 25.4% above the EU average, the fourth highest in the EU in 2017 after Denmark, Luxembourg and Sweden.

The quantity of waste landfilled in Ireland dropped by 64.1% between 2006 and 2016, from 1.98 to 0.71 million tonnes. Just over a quarter (25.7%) of municipal waste was landfilled in Ireland in 2016, above the EU average of 24.4%.

Ireland had 439 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 2016, the fifth lowest ratio in the EU. Luxembourg had the highest number of cars per 1,000 inhabitants at 662, while the lowest was in Hungary at 338.
In 2016, Ireland’s net greenhouse gas emissions exceeded the limit in the Kyoto Protocol by 0.4%, and this was the first time since 2008 that Ireland breached this limit.

Ireland had the second highest rate of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates in the EU in 2016. The proportion of graduates in these disciplines was 28.9 per 1,000 of the population aged 20-29 in Ireland, while the EU average was 19.1. In 2017, just over half (50.5%) of the population aged 25-34 had completed third level education, the third highest rate across the EU.

Healthy life years at birth for females in Ireland was 69.8 years in 2016, the third highest rate in the EU and 5.6 years above the EU average. Male healthy life years at birth in Ireland in 2016 was 67.3 years, the fifth highest rate in the EU and 3.8 years above the EU average.
Females in Ireland can expect to spend 16.5% of their life expectancy in poor health, the fourth lowest rate in the EU. In Finland, females are predicted to spend nearly a third of their life in poor health (32.5%), the highest rate in the EU. Irish males can expect to spend nearly 16.0% of their life expectancy in poor health, the fourth lowest rate in the EU. Males in Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, and Finland can anticipate spending about a quarter of their life expectancy in poor health.”

-- ENDS --