Fallen
Statistician Carol Anne Hennessy said: “In 2017, the number of births has fallen by 17.8% since 2010 and 3.2% since 2016.
“There were 61,824 live births in Ireland in 2017 with 31,779 males and 30,045 females. The 2017 total is 13.4% lower than 10 years previously when there were 71,389 live births."
The average age of mothers who gave birth in 2017 was 32.8 years. Mothers under the age of 30 accounted for 27.4% of births in 2017 compared with 2007 when mothers under 30 accounted for 39.3% of births.
Over a third (37.6%) of all births were outside of marriage/civil partnership in 2017. The comparable figure, 30 years earlier, in 1987 was 10.9%.
Mothers under 20
There were 1,038 births to mothers under 20 years of age in 2017, down from 2,505 in 2007, a decrease of 58.6%.
The number of maternities in 2017, which resulted in multiple live births, was 1,151, consisting of 1,134 sets of twins and 17 sets of triplets.
Over the past 25 years, the twinning rate has increased significantly – from a low of 11.7 per 1,000 maternities in 1991 to a high of 19.0 per 1,000 maternities in 2016. The twinning rate was 18.7 in 2017.
Deaths
There were 30,418 deaths in Ireland in 2017, a decrease of 249 or 0.8% on the 2016 figure. There were 9,141 or 30.1% of deaths attributed to malignant neoplasm, 8,889 or 29.2% of deaths attributed to diseases of the circulatory system, while deaths from diseases of the respiratory system numbered 4,059 or 13.3% of all deaths.
Diseases
Cancer and circulatory disease were the biggest causes of death in Ireland in 2017 while a shocking four-fifths of deaths by suicide were to male. Almost 1.3% (383) of all deaths were due to suicide in 2017, four-fifths or 80.9% of which were males.
There were 188 deaths of infants aged less than one year in 2017, giving an infant mortality rate of 3.0 deaths per 1,000 live births, a rate unchanged from 2016.
Neo-natal deaths
Neo-natal deaths are deaths of infants at ages under four weeks. There were 140 neonatal deaths registered in 2017, a neonatal mortality rate of 2.3 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Almost a third (32.4%) of all infant deaths occurred within the first day of birth, while 54.3% occurred within the first week.
Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities accounted for 40.4% of infant deaths, while certain conditions originating in the perinatal period accounted for 46.8% of infant deaths in 2017.
The natural increase (births minus deaths) in 2017 was 31,406, a decrease of 5.3% on the 2016 figure. The natural increase in 2007 was 43,272, over 27.4% more than the 2017 figure.