the Human Tissue Act coming into operation<\/a> this summer, meaning everybody is considered an organ donor unless they opt out or are included in a so-called excluded group.<\/p>\nDr Catherine Motherway from the HSE’s Organ Donation Transplant Ireland (ODTI) said this year\u2019s decrease is “not due to people not choosing to organ donors”.<\/p>\n
“None of the potential organ donors this year had their names on the opt-out register,” she explained.<\/p>\n
Dr Motherway said the Human Tissue Act brings Ireland “in line with international best practice.<\/p>\n
“The defining principal of the new law is consent; it is still your choice whether you want to be an organ donor.”<\/p>\n
The ODTI said the life-changing operations this year were possible because of the “selflessness” of 68 deceased and 29 living organ donors and their families.<\/p>\n
Across the three national transplant centres, 140 kidney, nine heart, 15 lung, 33 liver and five pancreas transplants were completed.<\/p>\n
This included kidney transplants from 29 living donors.<\/p>\n
Some donated organs that do not have a suitable match in Ireland are, where possible, offered to other countries where a suitable recipient can benefit.<\/p>\n
This is a reciprocal arrangement, with Irish patients also receiving organs from donors outside this country.<\/p>\n
The HSE has urged people to talk to their family members about organ donation and to make intentions known.<\/p>\n
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said 2025 marked a “significant moment for our organ donation and transplantation services with the introduction of a soft opt-out system”.<\/p>\n
She thanked all donors and their families for “their enormous act of kindness to transplant recipients, as well as to society”.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the falling numbers of transplants, the Irish Kidney Association called for “immediate attention and coordinated investment across our healthcare system to address the significant increased demand on services.”<\/p>\n
It said there were 540 people on the waiting lists for kidney transplants, approximately 20% of the total number of patients currently on kidney dialysis in Ireland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The HSE has reported a drop in the number of organ transplants carried out this year as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-216407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}