The proportion of children who are “happy with the way they are” has fallen “substantially” since before Covid, with immigrant children and those with a disability or chronic illness least happy, a Government report finds.
In addition school absenteeism has more than doubled at primary level and almost doubled at post primary, with the percentage of 10-17 year olds happy with their lives decreasing “substantially” since 2018, from 88.2 per cent to 78.5 per cent.
The findings are among many in a wide-ranging report, published annually by the Department of Children and titled the State of the Nation’s Children.
Prepared by the department’s data analytics section it includes metrics on the estimated 1,232,714 children’s wellbeing, health and social outcomes, relationships and informal and formal supports.
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In terms of school attendance in 2017-2022 the percentage of primary schoolchildren absent from school for 20 days or more, more than doubled from 12.1 per cent to 25 per cent, and the percentage of post-primary schoolchildren who were absent for the same length increased from 15 per cent to 22 per cent.
The report finds 28.6 per cent of 10-17 year olds had been bullied at school in the past couple of months, down from 31 per cent in 2018.
Traveller children (42.6 per cent), immigrant children (32.6 per cent) and children with a disability and/or chronic illness (36.6 per cent) were most vulnerable to being bullied, with Traveller children the only group to have reported an increase, from 42 per cent in 2018.
Among the report’s key findings are that Ireland has the youngest population of the EU 27 States, with 22.9 per cent of our population aged under 18. The EU-27 average is 18 per cent.
In 2022, 15.5 per cent of children lived in a single-parent family unit. The proportion among foreign national children was 12.3 per cent; among Traveller children 21.8 per cent and among disabled children 22.7 per cent.
There were 14,142 Traveller children in 2022, accounting for 1.2 per cent of the total child population, and 43 per cent of the total Traveller population. There were 88,630 foreign national children, accounting for 7 per cent of all children. Between 2016 and 2022 the number of foreign national children increased by 11 per cent – from 79,536.
There were 131,764 disabled children in 2022, accounting for 11 per cent of children.
In 2022, 75 per cent of first-class children were classified as being in the “normal” weight category, according to International Obesity Taskforce Standards with 17 per cent classified as either overweight or obese.
Just 2.4 per cent of children aged 10-17 reported smoking cigarettes every week. This remained unchanged between 2018 and 2022. A higher proportion (8.7 per cent) of the same age group reported having been drunk at least once in the past 30 days – up from 6.9 pert cent in 2018.
In 2022, 35.8 per cent of children aged 15 reported reading was one of their favourite hobbies, an increase from 2018.
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