CSO CSO

OVER 40,000 PEOPLE in Ireland tied the knot last year, according to the Central Statistics Office’s Marriages 2019 dataset released today.

In same-sex marriages, partners are generally older when they marry according to the study of 20,313 marriages in Ireland last year.

The data also shows that men and women were slightly older when they were getting married in 2019, than they were the previous year.

There were 19,673 opposite sex marriages last year in Ireland, along with 353 male same-sex marriages and 287 female same-sex marriages.

The average age of a man getting married in an opposite-sex wedding was 36.8 years, up from 36.4 in 2018. The average age of a man getting married to another man was 39.8 years, down slightly from 40.1 years the previous year.

Woman getting married in an opposite-sex wedding were 34.8 years old on average. Again, this was up from 34.4 years the previous year. For same-sex marriages, the average age of a woman was 39.3 years, up from 38.7 in 2019.

The most popular months to get married in 2019 were June, July and August with the latter having the most with 2,880 ceremonies.

January was the least popular month to get married with 569 ceremonies.

Friday was the most popular day to get married, with 7,650 ceremonies, and Sunday the least popular with 549 ceremonies.

The number of people getting married in Roman Catholic ceremonies fell again in 2019, to 45.1%. In 2018, this figure was 49.2%. In 2015, it was as high as 56.7%.

The proportion of civil ceremonies rose to 30.6% last year, from 29.8% last year.

The number of people opting for a Humanist and Spiritualist Union of Ireland ceremony also increased, as did those opting for a Spiritualist Union of Ireland ceremony.

In a statement, Education Equality said that the falling figures on Roman Catholic wedding ceremonies was further evidence that the government should compel schools to confine religious instruction to a period at the end of the school day, outside core school hours.

Its policy officer Paddy Monahan said: “There is a widening disconnect between our denominational school system and the actual beliefs of young families.”