Data on suicide and self-harm is an important tool when monitoring public health.
Trustworthy data about self-harm and suicide is essential for understanding the scale of these issues, identifying those most at risk and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to prevent self-harm and suicide.
It is therefore important that we understand the validity (are we measuring what we think we're measuring?) and reliability (do we measure in the same way, over time?) of data to ensure we are basing decisions and recommendations on good information.
Suicide Data in Ireland
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is responsible for reporting on suicide data in Ireland.
In Ireland, the decision as to whether someone has died by suicide is legally determined by Coroners and there is a time delay in the availability of data. Deaths by suicide must go through a coronial investigation, inquest and registration process.
Data on deaths by suicide is reported in stages. First, 'provisional' data is released based on the year of registration. This data is later revised to reflect year of occurrence and is considered ‘official’ at this stage. Finally, the data is revised later again to include 'late registrations', but this can happen years later.
Data from 2022 is the latest ‘official’ data released by the Central Statistics Office, however this data does not include late registrations which can increase figures substantially. The following figures are accurate as of 21 November 2025:
- In 2022, 500 people died by suicide in Ireland, 49 fewer people than in 2018.
- The highest number of deaths by suicide in 2022 occurred among people aged between 40 and 44 years at 63 deaths.
- Over the five-year period from 2018 to 2022, 2020 recorded the largest number of female deaths due to suicide in a single year at 142.
- In 2022, males aged 70 to 74 years had the highest crude suicide rate per 100,000 with 25.0 while the highest rate for females was 8.9 in the 40 to 44 years age group.
- The five-year average (2018 to 2022) of suicides in Ireland was 526. Dublin City Council was the Local Authority with the highest five-year average at 54.6, and Leitrim was the lowest at 3.0.
*Rates are age-standardised, find out more in our Using Suicide Data information here
The numbers and rates from 2022 and previous years are still subject to change with the inclusion of late registrations. This staged approach provides challenges and makes it difficult to identify trends or draw comparisons over time as at any given time, the data for different years may be at different stages.
Self-Harm Data in Ireland
The National Self-Harm Registry Ireland records and reports information about self-harm presentations to hospital emergency departments across the country. The Registry is operated by the National Suicide Research Foundation (NSRF) and is funded by the National Office for Suicide Prevention (NOSP).
Statistics on self-harm are reported on an annual basis. The most recent data are from 2024 (accurate as of March 2026).
- There were 12,621 presentations to hospital in 2024 by 9,436 individuals, which is comparable to recent years.
- One in six people attended more than once in 2024.
- The overall self-harm rate was 181 people per 100,000 population, with the highest rates amongst young people.
- Among 25–29-year-old males, one in every 268 had a self-harm act.
- Among 15–19-year-old females, one in every 153 had a self-harm act. Although lower than the peak rate in 2021, this group still experiences self-harm at a much greater rate than any other demographic.
- The rate of self-harm among 10–14-year-old girls has been increasing since 2011.
The National Self-Harm Registry Ireland 2024 Annual Report can be found in full here.
About the National Self-Harm Registry Ireland (from the NSRF)
Why record self-harm data?
Self-harm is more common than suicide and is one of the strongest risk factors for suicide. Hospital-presenting self-harm can be one of the most severe types of self-harm. As such, reducing the rate of hospital-presenting self-harm was one of the two defined outcomes of Connecting for Life, Ireland’s National Strategy to Reduce Suicide 2015–2024.
What does the Registry do?
The Registry tells us how many self-harm presentations there are to hospital emergency departments across the country each year. It tells us which groups in the country make the most presentations, when the presentations happen, what type of self-harm is involved, and which areas have the highest rates. With this information, the Registry helps to inform the improvement of services for individuals who self-harm, and also informs wider self-harm and suicide prevention efforts.
The NSHRI adheres to the GDPR guidelines for the processing of data.
What are my data protection rights if I attended hospital with self-harm?
If you attended a hospital emergency department with self-harm, your data may have been recorded by the Registry. Anyone is entitled to contact the Registry at any time to ask whether their data have been recorded. If they have been, you have the right to request a copy of your data and/or that your data be removed.
More details can be found here.
Samaritans Ireland recommendations on suicide and self-harm data
Collect timely and accurate self-harm data
Accurate and reliable data needs to be available in order to inform policy decisions and resource allocation. The National Suicide Research Foundation should be supported to ensure all hospitals are collecting and sharing data in a consistent and timely manner. All data should be standardised, validated and collected consistently to ensure transparency across the region.
Routine publication of suicide data on a wider set of risk factors, in both real-time datasets and national releases.
To support our understanding of key risk factors for suicide, including how they change over time, routine datasets should capture a wider range of characteristics. This would ideally include protected characteristics such as ethnicity and sexual orientation, as well as information that relates to suicide method and risk factors such as occupation, history of mental illness and contact with services.
Recognition of nuances to self-harm
When considering self-harm data it is important for researchers and policy makers to remember that the figures should be considered with wider literature. It can be difficult to determine the exact prevalence of self-harm in Ireland as the available data is reliant on individuals who come forward and present to emergency departments. Samaritans Ireland research shows that not everyone who self-harms will present to a hospital and their method of self-harm may also not be one of those included in the reporting. This means that self-harm is likely very underreported at a national level and a due to stigma is clouded by a certain level of stigma and secrecy.
Review of process for registering deaths by suicide.
In other jurisdictions, the standard of proof required for a suicide conclusion is ‘the balance of probabilities’, whereas in Ireland it is ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. Overly high burdens of proof can result in the number of suicides being underestimated, reducing the accuracy of suicide statistics. In addition to deaths by suicide likely being underestimated, the staged approach of reporting deaths by suicide in Ireland means there can be delays of a year or more. Timely death registration would enable quicker responses to emerging trends in suicide rates and avoid reported data being a mix of deaths from different years.