Louth records 396 births and 218 deaths in third quarter of last year

There were 396 births in Louth in the 3rd quarter of 2024 according to statistics released by The Central Statistics Office.

The average age of first time mothers in the county in the first quarter was 32.7  compared with a national average of 33.2.

According to the Vital Statistics Third Quarter 2024 release, 44% of those babies were born to people outside of marriage or civil partnership at 177.

The statistics released today also show the provisional number of deaths of residents in Louth. 

Between July and September, 218 people in Louth died. 

Of those, 110 were male and 108 were female. 

The biggest cause of death was cancer (67), followed by circulatory disease (45), Diseases of the Respiratory system (29) and external causes (14).

63 deaths in the third quarter of 2024 were listed as “All other causes.”

Nationally key findings show that there were 39 fewer births registered in Quarter 3 (Q3) 2024 compared with Q3 2023, or a fall of 0.3% to 13,809 births. There were 8,566 deaths registered in Q3 2024, which was 247 more deaths (3.0%) when compared with the same period in 2023. In Q3 2024, the Total Period Fertility Rate (TPFR) for Ireland was 1.5 which was below the replacement level of 2.1. 

In Q3 2014, 10 years ago, the TPFR stood at 1.9. The average age of all mothers in Q3 2024 was 33.2 years, up from the 33.1 years recorded in Q3 2023. Just over two in five (41.3%) births registered were outside marriage/civil partnership in Q3 2024. The natural increase (i.e. births minus deaths) was 5,243 in Q3 2024, which was down by 48.6% when compared with the same period in 2014.