These statistics have been compiled from the marriage registration forms of all marriages registered in the Republic of Ireland in the publication's given year.
The release has been prepared by the Central Statistics Office 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.
From 1 January 2019, the legal age requirement for marriage is 18 years. It is no longer possible to get a Court Exemption Order allowing a marriage to proceed if one or both parties are under 18 years.
Where the weekday and month of a marriage are specified in this release, it refers to the date on which the marriage occurred. Note that some marriages registered in the publication's given year (and hence included in these statistics) occurred in prior years.
As part of the 2021 Marriages release, the application of statistical disclosure control (SDC) was trialed. For the 2022 publication, this process was reviewed, and it was agreed to revert back to the pre SDC procedure.
Marriages celebrated according to the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church, the rites and ceremonies of the Church of Ireland, the forms and disciplines of the Presbyterian Church and the Spiritualist Union of Ireland. Civil Marriage and the Humanist Association have been classified under their respective ceremony. The usages of certain other Religious Bodies have been classified under 'other religious'. (Tables 1, 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B and Figure 2).
The age specific marriage rates are calculated as follows:
Age Specific Rate = Number of Males (or Females) of that age whose marriages were registered multiplied by 1,000 and divided by Population of Males (or Females) of that age.
The small number of marriages for which the age is not stated are distributed in proportion before this calculation is made.
One classification of district is available: that in which the marriage took place.
This is calculated for each year as follows:
Marriages per 1,000 population = Number of Marriages registered multiplied by 1,000 and divided by population.
Table 2 provides age specific marriage rates in respect of males and females in opposite-sex marriages and also provides rates for all male same-sex and all female same-sex marriages.
Civil Partnerships, introduced by the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010, enabled same-sex couples to obtain legal recognition of their relationship and this regulation was enacted on the 1st January 2011.
The Marriage Act 2015 (No 35/2015) effective from the 16th November 2015 (S.I 504/15 refers) allows parties of the same sex to marry.
The regional classifications in this release are based on the NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units) classification used by Eurostat. The NUTS3 regions correspond to the eight Regional Authorities established under the Local Government Act, 1991 (Regional Authorities) (Establishment) Order, 1993, which came into operation on 1 January 1994. The NUTS2 regions, which were proposed by Government and agreed by Eurostat in 1999, are groupings of the NUTS3 regions. The composition of the regions is set out below.
| Northern & Western NUTS2 Region | Southern NUTS2 Region | Eastern & Midland NUTS2 Region | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Border | Cavan Donegal Leitrim Monaghan Sligo |
Mid-West | Clare Limerick Tipperary |
Dublin | Dublin City Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Fingal South Dublin |
| South-East | Carlow Kilkenny Waterford Wexford |
Mid-East | Kildare Louth Meath Wicklow |
||
| West | Galway Mayo Roscommon |
South-West | Cork Kerry |
Midland | Laois Longford Offaly Westmeath |
EU14 excl. IRL: Countries before enlargement on 1 May 2004 (i.e. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Portugal). Formerly referred to as "EU13".
EU14 to 27: defined as 10 countries that joined the EU on 01 May 2004 (i.e. Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia), along with Bulgaria and Romania who joined on 01 January 2007 and Croatia who joined on the 01 July 2013 to EU14-27 states.
Marriage rates are calculated using the publication year's estimated census of population figures.
From 2007 onwards, the population concept of usual residence has been used, i.e. all persons usually resident and present in the State on census night, plus absent persons who are usually resident in Ireland, but are temporarily away from home and outside the State on Census night. All persons are classified according to the region of their usual residence.
Prior to 2007 the de facto population concept was used, i.e. the total persons resident in the State on Census night.
Census of population data is used to calculate marriage rates for Census years and estimated Census of population data is used to calculate marriage rates for intercensal years.