Louth had more than 500 births in the first quarter of 2022

There were 519 births in Louth in the 1st Quarter of 2022 according to statistics released by The Central Statistics Office.

The average age of first time mothers in the county in the first quarter was 30.5  compared with a national average of 31.7.

According to the Vital Statistics First Quarter 2022 release, almost half of those babies were born to people outside of marriage or civil partnership (48.9%). 

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

Between January and March, 256 people in Louth died. 

Of those, 132 were male and 124 female. 

The biggest cause of death was cancer (66),followed by circulatory disease (59), Diseases of the Respiratory system (29) and external causes (24).

Covid-19 accounted for 20 deaths in the first quarter of 2022. 

Nationally key findings show that:

• The number of births increased by 2,236 or 16.1% in Quarter 1 2022 (Q1) while there were 29 fewer deaths (0.3%) when compared with the same period in 2021
• There were 641 deaths due to COVID-19 in Q1 2022, accounting for 6.7% of deaths in the quarter of which 359 were male and 282 were female
• Cancer and circulatory disease were the biggest causes of death in Ireland in Q1 2022 accounting for 5,316 (or 55.8%) of deaths compared with 4,759 (or 49.8%) in Q1 2021
• Average age of all mothers in Q1 2022 was 33.3 years, which is an increase of 0.2 years when compared with Q1 2021, while 10 years ago the average age was 31.8 years for the same period
• More than two in five (43.6%) births were outside marriage/civil partnership
• The natural increase (i.e. births minus deaths) has risen by 52.3% compared with the same period in 2021
• Regarding births, there were 8,254 male and 7,877 female born in quarter 1 2022. The 16,131 births represent an annual birth rate of 12.9 per thousand population. An increase of 1.7 in the rate that was recorded in quarter 1 2021