This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
The Criminal Law (Suicide) Act 1993 decriminalised the act of suicide.
In many cases the cause of death is known, i.e. the deceased was under the care of a doctor etc. and in these cases, the doctor can fill out the Medical Certificate of the Cause of Death in a relatively straightforward manner as the cause was generally an illness or sickness the deceased suffered. However, in certain cases the cause of death is not immediately known and the case is referred to a Coroner. Deaths from sudden, unexplained, violent, and unnatural deaths must be reported and investigated by the Coroner, see Irish Statute Book for further information.
The Coroner is an independent office holder with responsibility under the law for the medico-legal investigation. The Coroner's investigation may require a post-mortem examination, sometimes followed by an inquest. The Coroner’s inquiry will establish whether death was due to natural or unnatural causes, see Dublin Coroner for further information.
If death is due to unnatural causes, then an inquest must be held by law. An inquest takes place in about 15% of cases referred to a Coroner (some 2,000 to 2,200 cases each year). The death will be registered by means of a Coroner’s Certificate when the inquest is concluded (or adjourned in some cases).
For further information please see the General Register Office Annual Report 2023 and the Coroners Annual Returns 2023.
A Form 104 is issued by the CSO to the Gardaí in respect of some inquest cases. This form is sent to the Divisional Inspector of the relevant location where the death occurred and is then redirected to the Garda that attended the scene of the death. The Form 104 collects additional information on the circumstances/location of the death and the information returned on this form is strictly confidential under the Statistics Act 1993.
The Garda completing the Form 104 provides his/her opinion as to whether the death was an accident, homicide, suicide or undetermined. That information is taken into account when the CSO assigns a statistical code for cause of death.
The Form 104 was first issued in October 1967 and revised in 1998 following a recommendation by the Taskforce on Suicide, to improve the statistical classification of deaths by suicide. A copy of the revised version of the form is included in the background notes.
Users should note that the number of deaths from suicide for a given year may increase if such a death is registered late. This should be borne in mind when examining trends over time and when making comparisons, for recent years, with other countries.
This release uses all latest available current data to revise the suicide figures. The originally published data was published at T+22 months after the reference period in question, so for example, results for year 2021 was first published in October 2023. The CSO introduced table VSA35 which provides updated figures on deaths from 2007 to 2022. Data for the period 2023 relates to annual report data published in VSA29.
Inquests, coroners reports and challenges for deaths classed as suicide, can take longer than the 22-month timeframe to reach a conclusion and appear in the figures presented in this report. These reasons help to explain the difference between current data and originally published data.
Since 01 January 2018 the CSO is uses automated software called IRIS for selecting the underlying cause of death code (UCOD). The IRIS coding system has been developed by the IRIS core group to code mortality data and is the preferred coding tool for European countries.
The mortality coder when coding inquest cases in the CSO examines both the Coroner's Certificate and Form 104, where applicable, and assign ICD-10 classification codes to all other reported conditions and select the UCOD, defined as:
(a) the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death, or (b) the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury.
The mortality coders apply the W.H.O international mortality coding instructions pre-supposing that data has been collected with a death certificate conforming to the International Form of Medical Certificate of Cause of Death as recommended by the WHO. It is the responsibility of the medical practitioner or other qualified certifier signing the death certificate to indicate which morbid conditions led directly to death and to state any pre-existing conditions giving rise to this cause.
These are key to the correct assignment of the underlying cause of death and the hierarchy in which the causes are written on the death certificate impacts on the assignment of the UCOD.
If the Coroner's Certificate provides enough information to assign a statistical cause of death code, it is not necessary for the CSO to issue a Form 104 to the Gardai. If there is not enough information provided by the Coroner's Certificate, then it is necessary for the CSO to issue a Form 104. When assigning a cause of death code, if the Coroner's Certificate does not mention suicide but the Garda states on Form 104 that the death was as a result of intentional self-harm, the statistical cause of death is coded as suicide.
The classification system used for cause of death is 10th revision of the International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems.
The two main additional data sources utilised to provide insight into deaths by nationality and ethnicity is taken from the Department of Social Protection's (DSP) Central Records System (CRS) and Census (either 2016 or 2022).
The CRS is a system within the Department of Social Protection (DSP) which holds data on their customers on different systems within DSP. Demographic data from the CRS used in this publication includes information on country of nationality.
The Census provides information on self-reported ethnicity.
Data is linked utilising a Protected Identifier Key (PIK) with the covered population being any death which could be linked to either the DSP's CRS to identify nationality or else any death which could be linked to Census 2016 (deaths from 2019 to 2022 Census night) or Census 2022 (deaths post 2022 Census night to 2023).
Learn about our data and confidentiality safeguards, and the steps we take to produce statistics that can be trusted by all.