THE CSO FIGURES for the first quarter of this year are out and they give a good snapshot of what has been happening nationwide on the births, marriages and deaths fronts.
Dublin is still beating Cork in the battle of the babies, while Leitrim is coming in last again with the lowest number of registered births in the first quarter of 2016.
The figures also showed that the average age of first-time mothers is up from the same period in 2015.
With civil partnership no longer available for same-sex couples, more than 180 have married in the first few months of 2016.
Births
The number of births fell by 703 in the first quarter of 2016.
With 16,480 births in the first quarter of this year, of this there were 8,537 male births and 7,943 female births.
These figures have been released by the Central Statistics Office as part of the Vital Statistics Quarter 1 2016.
The highest number of births registered was in Dublin city – 1,933 – followed by Cork county, which had 1,454 registered births. Leitrim had the lowest number, with 108 registered births in the first quarter of 2016. The same pattern was reflected in quarter one of 2015.
A total of 6,245 births (37.9%) were to first-time mothers in the first quarter of this year, while there were 5,806 births (35.2%) to second-time mothers. This accounted for a total of 73.1% of births.
Age of mothers
The average age of first-time mothers was 30.8, up 0.2 years from the same period in the previous year.
The average age of first-time mothers outside marriage/civil partnership was 28.4, while the average age of all mothers outside marriage/civil partnership was 29.9 years.
Marriages
The number of marriages registered during the quarter was 3,539, of which 186 were same-sex marriages.
Deaths
The number of deaths rose by five compared to the same period in 2015.
With 8,609 deaths in the first four months of the year, this is an increase of just 0.1% from the first quarter of 2015 when 8,604 deaths were registered.
Of these deaths, 4,339 were male while 4,270 were female.
Diseases of the circulatory system accounted for 2,657 deaths. There were 2,356 deaths from malignant cancers.
Among young adults aged 15 to 34, external causes of death including accidents, suicide and ‘other’ ranked first.
There were 63 infant deaths registered, giving an infant mortality rate of 3.8 per 1,000 live births.
The natural increase in the population (births minus deaths) for the first quarter of this year was 7, 871.
The estimated population at last count, in April 2015 was 4,635,400.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say