The number of organ transplants from donors in Ireland fell sharply this year, but the HSE has insisted this is not because of the new opt-out register.
Transplant teams carried out 202 organ transplants from 68 deceased and 29 living organ donors throughout the year.
That compares poorly to the last few years and is similar to the low figures during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Numbers in recent years were: 274 in 2019, 190 in 2020, 206 in 2021, 250 in 2022, 282 in 2023 and 263 in 2024.
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The Irish Kidney Association has called for immediate efforts to reverse the slide.
“This decline in donation and transplant activity has profound implications for the growing number of people in Ireland living with organ failure and their families,” it said.
Almost 700 people are on the waiting list for an organ transplant in Ireland, with nearly 80 per cent of them requiring a kidney.
Dr Catherine Motherway of the HSE’s Organ Donation Transplant Ireland (ODTI) programme acknowledged the slump in donations but said it was not caused by the new opt-out rules.
“We know that this is not due to people not choosing to be organ donors,” she said. “None of the potential organ donors this year had their names on the opt-out register.”
The HSE said advances in road safety, accident prevention and in medical practice, particularly interventional radiology which improves health outcomes, are combining to reduce or mitigate some of the circumstances that previously led to donation. “This progress has contributed to a smaller pool of potential organ donors,” it said.
“To address this, other medical advances such as donation after circulatory death and organ perfusion to increase the opportunities for organ donation in older potential donors must be progressed.”
ODTI has urged families to discuss organ donation so that everyone knows each other’s wishes.
The opt-out register allows people to state that they do not wish to be considered an organ donor after their death, in which case the issue will not be raised with their next of kin. Where there is no opt-out, and a deceased person could potentially donate organs, the next of kin are asked for consent.
ODTI says people may not be aware that they can be organ donors into their 60s and 70s. The average donor from Ireland is in their 40s, which is much younger than in countries where organ donation and transplant rates are higher.
This year 140 kidney, 33 liver, 15 lung, nine heart and five pancreas transplants were carried out.
The mother of a young man whose organs were donated 20 years ago spoke of how this was a comfort to the family to this day.
Martina Goggin from Galway, who lost her son Éamonn (26) in a road crash in 2006, said she and her husband would have been devastated if not given the opportunity to donate his organs.
“The comfort and consolation to us in knowing our son, Éamonn, made the noblest act of generosity by giving the gift of life to others is like a light that has continued to shine even on the darkest days,” she said.
