Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 291: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children the number of persons who have been treated for injuries as a result of fireworks during the nine years since 1996; the breakdown of the figures in terms of age profile; the county origins of the persons injured and the types of injuries sustained. [30617/05]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the following tables. Data are derived from the hospital inpatient enquiry, HIPE, system which records information on each episode of hospitalisation in publicly funded acute hospitals. The primary aim of HIPE is to provide measures of hospital activity for specific diagnostic and procedure categories. There is provision in HIPE for coding of underlying external causes of types of injuries, such as fireworks, but this information may not always be available to the coder and significant under-reporting is therefore possible. National statistics are not available on injuries from fireworks which do not result in hospitalisation.

Table 1 provides figures for each year from 1996 to 2004 and separately for Dublin residents and the rest of the country. Numbers of cases are too small to provide a breakdown by individual county of residence. Table 2 shows an age and gender breakdown for all years combined. Nearly 70% of injuries are to males under the age of 20. Table 3, again for all years combined, indicates the principal types of injuries sustained. More than 40% of all principal diagnoses are burn injuries.