Press Statement

Preasráiteas

12 November 2021

Go to release: Vital Statistics Annual Report 2019

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (12 November 2021) released the Vital Statistics Annual Report 2019.

Commenting on the report, Carol Anne Hennessy, Statistician, said: “In 2019, the number of births has fallen by 19.9% since 2011 and 2.8% since 2018. There were 59,294 live births in Ireland in 2019 with 30,271 males and 29,023 females born. The 2019 total was 16,260 (or 21.5%) lower than 10 years earlier, in 2009, when there were 75,554 live births.

The average age of mothers who gave birth in 2019 was 33.1 years. Mothers under the age of 30 accounted for 26.2% (or 15,557) of births in 2019 compared with 2009 when mothers under 30 accounted for 38.8% of births.

Almost two-fifths (22,643 or 38.2%) of all births were outside of marriage/civil partnership in 2019. The comparable figure, 30 years earlier in 1989 was 12.8% (6,671 births).

There were 858 births to mothers aged under 20 years in 2019, down from 2,249 in 2009, a decrease of 61.8%.

The number of maternities in 2019 which resulted in multiple live births was 1,081 consisting of 1,058 sets of twins, 21 sets of triplets and two sets of quadruplets. Over the past 20 years, the twinning rate has increased significantly – from 13.7 per 1,000 maternities in 1999 to a high of 19.0 per 1,000 maternities in 2016. The twinning rate was 18.2 in 2019.

There were 31,184 deaths in Ireland in 2019, an increase of 44 on the 2018 figure. There were 9,574 or 30.7% of deaths attributed to malignant neoplasms, 8,928 or 28.6% of deaths attributed to diseases of the circulatory system, while deaths from diseases of the respiratory system in 2019 numbered 3,930 or 12.6% of all deaths.

There were 2,392 (or 7.7%) deaths due to Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in 2019. Of these, almost two-thirds (64.0%) were female.

Deaths from suicide accounted for 1.3% (or 390) of all deaths in 2019, of which over three-quarters or 76.9% were males.

There were 167 deaths of infants aged less than one year in 2019 giving an infant mortality rate of 2.8 deaths per 1,000 live births, down 0.1 from 2018. Neonatal deaths are deaths of infants at ages under four weeks. There were 128 neonatal deaths registered in 2019, a neonatal mortality rate of 2.2 deaths per 1,000 live births. Almost two fifths (38.3%) of all infant deaths occurred within the first day of birth, while 56.9% occurred within the first week. Certain conditions originating in the perinatal period accounted for 46.1% of infant deaths while congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities accounted for 40.7% of infant deaths in 2019.

The natural increase (births minus deaths) in 2019 was 28,110, a decrease of 5.9% on the 2018 figure. The natural increase in 2009 was 47,174, 40.4% more than the 2019 figure.”

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