Almost 20% of deaths in Ireland occurred in a disadvantaged area, figures show

Almost 20% of all registered deaths in Ireland in 2025 occurred in disadvantaged areas, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The research was done by assigning birth and death registration data to HSE Regions as well as Census boundaries.

In 2025, two out of every ten deaths registered in Ireland had occurred in a disadvantaged, very disadvantaged or extremely disadvantaged area.

There were over 54,000 births registered in 2025, and the CSO found that nearly one out of every four british took place in the Dublin and North East HSE region.

For registered deaths (35,587), two out of every ten took place in the Dublin and North East HSE region.

The lowest number of both deaths and births in 2025 occurred in the HSE Mid West region, with 4,204 births and 3,164 deaths.

In Dublin and the North East, women aged 30 to 34 had the highest number of births in 2025, at 4,569.

In highly rural and remote areas, these accounted for 7.5% of births (4,065) and 11.8% (4,207) of deaths.

Seán O’Connor, Statistician in the Life Events and Demography Division of the CSO, said: “Today’s release, which is part of the CSO Frontier Series, provides information and evidence on life events such as births and deaths not only by HSE health region, but also by the degree of deprivation and urban and rural status.

“For this release, the CSO has introduced new methods for enhancing the geocoding of birth and death statistics to allow for analysis by health regions, area deprivation status, and degree of urban/rural in areas. Care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete.

“This release not only captures registered births and deaths by health region for the year 2025 but also contains backdated health region birth and death data from 2019. In terms of life events registered in 2025, the majority tended to take place in the HSE Dublin and North East health region. Of the 35,587 deaths registered in 2025, this region accounted for two out of every ten (7,342 deaths) and for almost a quarter (12,998 births) of the 54,125 births registered in 2025.

In contrast, the HSE Mid West health region was the area with the lowest number of births and deaths in 2025, with 4,204 births and 3,164 deaths.

In 2025, 1.0% (555) of births were to teenage mothers, while 0.8% (410) were to mothers aged 45 years and over. This was similar across all six health regions. Mothers aged 30 to 34 in the HSE Dublin and North East health region were the group with the greatest number of births in 2025 at 4,569, or 8.4% of total births. In contrast, mothers aged 45 years and over in the HSE Mid West health region were the group with the lowest number of births in 2025 with 33 or 0.1% of total registered births.

“In 2025, one out of every three deaths occurred in Cities (11,661 of 35,587), with a similar share for births (17,748 of 54,125). In contrast, around one in every ten deaths (4,207 of 35,587) occurred in areas classified as being Highly Rural / Remote, while for births it was 7.5% (4,065 of 54,125).

“Nationally, 12,938 (or 36.4%) of deaths were to those aged 85 years or older in 2025. This share was lowest in the HSE Dublin and Midlands health region when it accounted for 33.1% of deaths, and was highest in HSE Dublin and South East health region when it was 38.7%.

“In 2025, the natural increase which is births less deaths stood at 18,538. Five of the six different urban rural classifications all experienced a positive natural increase where there were more births than deaths, except for regions considered Highly Rural / Remote where there were 142 more deaths than births registered in 2025.

“Looking at the natural increase across different levels of deprivation, areas considered to be Very Disadvantaged were the only areas to experience a negative natural increase with 40 more deaths taking place than births.”