50 babies born last year to girls under 16

THERE were 50 babies born to girls under 16 last year, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office.

The Vital Statistics 2009 report also revealed that two girls in the country had given birth to their second child by the time they were 16 and 201 were mothers before their 17th birthday.

Of those who had a baby by the time they were 16, four were married and 18 were cohabiting with their partner.

In spite of these figures, the director of the Crisis Pregnancy Programme, Caroline Spillane, said the total 2,223 teenage births in 2009 was less than the 2008 figure of 2,426.

“These figures indicate that initiatives to increase young people’s knowledge about relationships and sexuality are having an impact in reducing teenage pregnancy,” she said.

“When we were first established, parents consistently told us how difficult they found it to bring up the subject of sex with their children and asked for help in talking about the issue. Parents are to be commended for making great efforts to give their children the information they need to make healthy decisions about relationships and sex.”

The Vital Statistics report gives a details on the country’s births, deaths and marriages.

It revealed there were 74,278 babies born last year, 38,082 boys and 36,196 boys. While the figure was 1% less than in 2008, the CSO said the figure remained very high given that the 2008 total was the highest since 1896. The 2009 figure is the second highest since then and is still 36.9% higher than in 2000.

Just over 33% of births in 2009 were outside of marriage. Of those 56% were to cohabiting parents. The highest rate of births outside marriage occurred in Limerick city, at 49%.

At the other end of the life-spectrum, there were 28,898 deaths, an increase of 706 on the 2008 figure. That means a slight increase in the death rate from 6.4 per 1,000 of population to 6.5.

Three out of every four deaths resulted from diseases of the circulatory system (34%), cancer (29%) or diseases of the respiratory system (13%).

There were 8,398 deaths due to cancer, an increase of 2.4% in the year. Of those, 126 people died from skin cancer, including two aged under 24 years. That figure emerged as Health Minister Mary Harney announced her approval of new legislation regulating the use of sunbeds, which will, amongst other things, prohibit the sale or hire of sunbeds to anyone under 18 years, prohibit the use of sunbeds in an unsupervised premises and prohibit those with skin type 1 (very fair skin) from using sunbeds.

There were 240 infant deaths registered in 2009 giving an infant mortality rate of 3.2 deaths per 1,000 live births. There were 169 neonatal deaths (deaths of infants at ages under four weeks). Three women died during childbirth.

There were 49 deaths by homicide or assault (40 men and nine women) and 1,086 by accidents. AIDS claimed the lives of 16 people, 12 of whom were men.

On a more positive note, there were 21,541 marriages registered in 2009, though that figure was 702 less than in 2008. The number of divorces granted by the Circuit Court and the High Court was 3,341, a decrease of 289 on the 2008 figure.

Finally the CSO confirmed that the estimated population of Ireland in April 2009 was 4,459,300 an increase of 37,800 on the previous year.