Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
Link to this: Individually | In context

410. To ask the Minister for Health if her Department has undertaken any study to determine which age cohorts are most at risk of suicide; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52669/25]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

As this is a service matter, I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond directly to the Deputy as soon as possible.

Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
Link to this: Individually | In context

411. To ask the Minister for Health if her Department holds any statistics on the number of suicides which occurred in each of the past ten years; if a breakdown can be provided by age, gender, geography and social class; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52670/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The Department of Health is not responsible for the publication of statistics on the number of suicides. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) publishes Vital Statistics for the Minister for Social Protection in accordance with the provisions of Section 2 of the Vital Statistics and Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act, 1952 and Government Order SI 831 of 2007. Vital Statistics include statistics on deaths by cause of death.

The CSO publishes quarterly Vital Statistics on all registered deaths as well as a Yearly Summary (available here: www.cso.ie/en/statistics/birthsdeathsandmarriages/vitalstatistics/). These reports record the number of deaths registered in that quarter or year by cause of death. Information on deaths is only available for deaths which have been registered with the General Registers Office (GRO).

Data on deaths by date of occurrence is published by the CSO in the Vital Statistics Annual Report where all figures are classified by year of occurrence i.e. the year in which the death occurred (available here: www.cso.ie/en/statistics/birthsdeathsandmarriages/vitalstatisticsannualreport). Deaths not registered with the GRO during the year of occurrence or the subsequent 22 months are not available for the Vital Statistics Annual Report and not included.

All deaths attributable to external causes are referred to the Coroner. Investigations can take a protracted length of time to complete. As such, these deaths are registered after the standard three-month time period, and often much later than the 22-month deadline for CSO annual Vital Statistics publications.

Data on deaths registered with a cause of death of ‘intentional self-harm’ are reported in all the CSO’s quarterly and annual Vital Statistics publications. However, as all deaths due to external causes are reported to the Coroner's Office for further investigation, the number of registrations for any given period will likely underrepresent the number of deaths which have occurred due to accidents, suicide, or other external causes of mortality.

To address this, the CSO publish a dedicated annual release on Suicide Statistics (available here: www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-ss/suicidestatistics2021/). The latest release was published in November 2024 and includes data up to the year 2021. The next release is due to be published in November 2025 to include data up to 2022. Given the impact of late registrations, the CSO introduced a range of tables for ‘Revised Deaths Occurring’ to take account of late registered deaths.

The CSO-Suicide Mortality Statistics Liaison Group (see here: www.cso.ie/en/aboutus/lgdp/cgt/ocg/csogroups/smslg/) also works with a range of stakeholders, including the Department of Health, to improve the quality of suicide statistics and their dissemination.

In response to the question, please find, at the links below, data extracted from the CSO’s database Table VSA35 (data.cso.ie/table/VSA35) Revised Deaths Occurring on the number of deaths with a cause of death of ‘X60-X84 Intentional self-harm’ by sex and age group for the ten years 2012-2021, the most recent available in the ‘Revised Deaths Occurring’ series.

Also find at the links below data extracted from the CSO’s database Table VSA112 (data.cso.ie/table/VSA112) Revised Deaths Occurring on the number of deaths with a cause of death of ‘X60-X84 Intentional self-harm’ by sex and Local Authority area for the seven years 2015-2021 which is the full time series available in this Table.

Data on suicides by social class is not available in the CSO Suicide Statistics annual release.

In addition, in the last year, the Department of Health have established the National Probable Suicide Monitoring System (NPSMS) within the Health Research Board (HRB). The NPSMS is a new database which will collect and publish data on deaths by probable suicide in Ireland. As researchers will collect data from coronial files, including on probable suicides, i.e. not solely where the Coroner has determined a verdict of suicide, the NPSMS will provide data on more deaths than those recorded in the CSO data, and will have more in-depth information on the characteristics of people who have died by probable suicide.

Connecting for Life(CfL), Ireland’s national suicide reduction strategy, which came to an end in 2024, has guided suicide reduction efforts for the last decade. Reducing deaths by suicide is a very complex task, but evidence and experience internationally shows that measurable improvements in suicide prevention can be achieved through effective cross-governmental work. Connecting for Life adopted this approach and suicide reduction initiatives have been advanced in many areas, including health, local government, justice, media, and agriculture.

Work to develop a successor suicide reduction strategy is well advanced. Connecting for Life has been formally evaluated, and the Department of Health has recently run a public consultation survey, which received approximately 1,900 submissions, and held 7 in-person consultation sessions. The significant response by the public to this consultation demonstrates the strength of feeling to reducing lives lost to suicide in our country. The voices of those with lived experience will be central to shaping our next national strategy.

The reports arising from the various aspects of the public consultation were recently published and these, along with the findings from the evaluation of Connecting for Life,will be invaluable in the development of Ireland’s next suicide reduction strategy.