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This publication 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.
All figures in this report are classified by year of occurrence, and figures from 2007 onwards include late registered deaths.
Deaths are classified to the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) International Classification of Diseases, Version 10 (ICD10).
The Underlying Cause of Death (UCOD) has been defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) 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.
From 1st January 2018 the CSO is using IRIS software to assign the UCOD. IRIS is a European developed automated coding software, endorsed by Eurostat and is maintained by the IRIS institute and all W.H.O. updates to the ICD-10 classification are included according to the WHO timelines.
Inquest deaths are coded manually due to the nature of the reporting of these cases. The difficulty lies in automatically assigning a verdict from a broad range of verdicts open to a Coroner or jury which include accidental death, misadventure, suicide, open verdict, natural causes (if so found at inquest) and in certain circumstances, unlawful killing.
Figures in relation to rates are derived from population estimate figures derived by the CSO - PEA01
Temperature related data is taken from the following source - MTM06. In order to derive an average figure for Ireland, per month a simple average was taken across all the Meteorological Weather Station points presented in MTM06.
Crude deaths per 100,000 of population is calculated based on the population estimate figures.
Usual Residence Population concept: From 2007 onwards, the population concept of usual residence has been used, i.e. all persons usually resident and present in the State on census night, plus absent persons who are usually resident in Ireland, but are temporarily away from home and outside the State on Census night. All persons are classified according to the region of their usual residence.
Prior to 2007 the de facto population concept was used, i.e. the total persons resident in the State on Census night.
Census of population data is used to calculate rates for Census years and estimated Census of population data is used to calculate rates for intercensal years.
Deaths that occur in the State should be registered within 3 months of the date thereof, particularly in the case of a natural cause of death. However, all deaths attributable to external causes are referred to the Coroner's Court. As such, a lag can occur as to when these deaths are registered with the General Register Office (GRO) and in some cases they can be registered much later than the 22 month deadline to produce the CSO's Vital Statistics Annual Reports.
Therefore, the figures presented within the CSO's Annual Report should be considered a point in time estimate of deaths and will potentially be subject to increase as further late registered deaths are lodged with the General Register Office (GRO) and processed by the CSO.
Crude death rates per 100,000 of population are presented in this publication to allow a fairer comparison of deaths across different cohorts and time. Below provides more information as to how these are calculated.
Monthly crude death rate (MCDR): The number of deaths per cohort in each month is multiplied by a factor of 12 and then divided by the relevant population estimate for that year and finally multiplied by 100,000.
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