Number of expected SS marriages in Ireland?

OU812

Hi folks,

Hope some of you might be able to help me out or at least point me in the right direction.

I've been tasked with finding out how many same sex marriages are expected to take place in Ireland in the coming year. I know that in the weeks following the signing into law, it was expected that there would be about 300, but obviously that would include a lot of people who were waiting for it to be legal here & will taper off.

I know that (according to the CSO) there were 22,045 registered marriages here in 2014, I'm trying to figure out what percentage that's likely to go up by.

Hope you can help & appreciate any help I get.

ongarboy

Who has tasked you with finding this information? I imagine it won't be until after the full year has surpassed that Registry offices will need to make their CSO returns and only then official statistics can be compiled and made available to the public.

Short of that, to make any sort of estimate, you'd probably have to contact the individual registrar offices of each of the 26 counties to see what legal notification of same sex weddings have already been submitted (and they may not share this sort of information with any joe bloggs off the street). Bear in mind that those who already had a civil partnership only have to give 5 days notice to transfer it to a marriage while any couples intending to marry need to give 3 months notice so any data you may even have been given access to will only cover those notice periods and could fluctuate wildly over the course of the full year.

OU812

ongarboy wrote: »

Who has tasked you with finding this information? I imagine it won't be until after the full year has surpassed that Registry offices will need to make their CSO returns and only then official statistics can be compiled and made available to the public.

Short of that, to make any sort of estimate, you'd probably have to contact the individual registrar offices of each of the 26 counties to see what legal notification of same sex weddings have already been submitted (and they may not share this sort of information with any joe bloggs off the street). Bear in mind that those who already had a civil partnership only have to give 5 days notice to transfer it to a marriage while any couples intending to marry need to give 3 months notice so any data you may even have been given access to will only cover those notice periods and could fluctuate wildly over the course of the full year.

Thanks ongarboy. The company is looking at launching a wedding related product & want to know what the likely variance will be once SS marriages are included

Ten of Swords

I don't think it will be a significant number compared to the 2014 marriage figure you mentioned.

As a guide, there have been just short of 1,700 civil partnerships in Ireland between 2011 and 2014. Some of those will be converted to full marriages, beyond that the legislation is too new to know what the natural annual uptake rate will be once the initial spike has worked itself out.

Annasopra

I'd imagine the variance number would be tiny.

I found some info of possible interest if you google "2011 census gay couples"

Peregrinus

As civil partnership registrations are no longer possible, people who would in the past have celebrated civil partnerships are now likely to celebrate marriages. So the number of civil partnerships each year is probably a good rough-and-ready estimate of the number of same sex marriages in future years. Obviously, you'd need to ignore the first year or so after civil partnerships were introduced, when you had a large backlog of established partnership seeking legal recognition. Here are the figures, per Wikipedia:

2011: 536 partnerships
2012: 429
2013: 338
2014: 392

I would have said that, ball-park, that points to an expected annual rate of between 300 and 400 same-sex marriages, after the initial rush has settled down. Possibly slightly higher, as they may have been "all-or-nothing" couples who want recognition but decline to accept any kind of segregated recognition like civil partnership, but my guess is that this is not a big factor.

As others have said, it's not likely to be significant in the context of the overall number of marriages.