Parents of children who die before their first birthday will no longer have to pay the €20 charged by the state to register the death.
The order was signed last week by Leo Varadkar, the social protection minister, and comes into effect tomorrow. It extends a decision by Varadkar in July to abolish the death registration fee for stillborn children.
“I am conscious of the distress the death of a baby causes to a family and my intention is to alleviate any additional distress which may arise during the registration process to parents who have lost a baby,” Varadkar said.
In 2015, the state issued certificates simultaneously for the births and deaths of 95 children aged up to 12 months, while 168 deaths of children under the age of one were recorded last year. Varadkar’s spokesman said that while the numbers involved are small “there is a huge emotional cost in each case”.
According to the HSE, about 360 stillbirths are registered in Ireland every year. A stillborn child is a baby born dead after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
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Meanwhile, the father of a seven-year-old boy who is thought to have been killed by his mother before she took her own life in London last week has written of his heartbreak at losing his “best buddy”.
Writing on Facebook, Shane O’Driscoll, from Bray, in Co Wicklow, said words could not express his feelings since the death of Oisín, who was found dead with his mother, Sinéad Higgins, who was originally from Mayo.
O’Driscoll thanked friends and family for their support. “Today it became real when I had the first opportunity to hold Oisín and see his little face,” he wrote. “My best buddy has been taken from this world and from all his little friends.”