Last updated: October 2026. Human written and fact checked against each named source.
For years, most of the menopause figures widely quoted in Ireland came from online surveys run by private clinics or advocacy groups. That changed in November 2025, when the Department of Health’s Healthy Ireland Survey measured menopause for the first time, using a nationally representative sample. This page gathers those first official figures alongside the CSO’s population estimates and the State’s own data on free HRT and specialist clinics. It is written for journalists, employers, health writers and anyone who needs a sourced Irish figure on menopause, perimenopause or HRT.
Key Menopause Statistics for Ireland at a Glance
- 406,597 women in Ireland are aged 45 to 54, the age band in which menopause symptoms are most common, out of 2.78 million women in total. Source: CSO Population Estimates 2026, table PEA11
- 84% of women who have gone through or are going through menopause experienced symptoms, and 13% describe them as severe enough to significantly affect their life. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025
- 77% report temperature regulation problems, the most common symptom, ahead of changes in periods (67%) and fatigue (66%). Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025
- 73% of women in perimenopause report brain fog, meaning difficulty with memory or concentration. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025
- 48% of women in perimenopause describe the experience as negative, against 25% who describe it as positive. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025
- 40% of women in perimenopause say their symptoms leave them less able to pay attention at work, and 8% have missed an entire workday because of them. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025
- 69% of women in perimenopause have sought medical support, and 84% of those went to their GP. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025
- 93% of perimenopausal women taking HRT say it works, 55% very effective and 38% somewhat effective. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025
- HRT has been free in Ireland since 1 June 2025, and 98% of community pharmacies now provide it. Sources: Department of Health, June 2025 and Women’s Health Action Plan 2026 to 2027
- Ireland has six specialist menopause clinics for women with complex symptoms. Source: Women’s Health Action Plan 2026 to 2027
The First Official Measure of Menopause in Ireland
The Healthy Ireland Survey is the Department of Health’s annual study of health and lifestyle behaviours. Its 2025 wave, published on 7 November 2025, included a module on menopause for the first time. Of the women eligible to answer, 78%, or 2,837 women, agreed to take part, the first time the State’s own national health survey has measured menopause. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025 Summary Report.
That matters because most menopause statistics in circulation in Ireland before this point came from online surveys promoted by private menopause clinics or advocacy groups. Those surveys are useful for understanding the experiences of women who seek them out, but their samples are self-selected, so they tend to overstate how common severe symptoms are across the whole population. The Healthy Ireland figures are interviewer-administered and weighted to be representative, which is why every symptom and work figure on this page comes from that source rather than from clinic surveys.
How Many Women Are Going Through Menopause
The CSO’s most recent population estimates put 406,597 women in Ireland aged 45 to 54 in 2026, which is 14.6% of the 2,784,922 women in the State. Widening the band to 40 to 59 gives 799,607 women, or 28.7% of all women. Source: CSO Population and Migration Estimates, table PEA11, updated August 2026; both percentages are calculated from that table.
Across all women in the survey, 8% said they were in the perimenopause phase, 7% in the menopause transition and 28% in post-menopause, meaning five years or more without a period. The phases cluster tightly by age. Among women aged 45 to 49, 38% are in perimenopause and 13% in the menopause transition. Among women aged 50 to 54, 24% are in perimenopause and 35% in the transition. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025.
Applying those age-specific proportions to the CSO’s 2026 population figures gives a rough idea of scale: in the order of 220,000 women aged 45 to 54 are in perimenopause or the menopause transition at any one time. That is our own calculated estimate, combining two sources, and it excludes women outside that age band, women using a hormonal coil or implant who could not say which phase they were in (3%), and those who did not know (3%), so it should be read as an indication rather than a precise count.
The Most Common Symptoms
Temperature regulation problems, feeling unusually hot or cold during the day or night, are the most widely reported symptom at 77%, but the full list is long and its shape changes as women move through the phases. The table below is compiled from the survey’s own breakdown.
| Symptom | All | Perimenopause | Transition | Post-menopause |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature regulation (feeling unusually hot or cold) | 77% | 69% | 77% | 79% |
| Changes in periods | 67% | 69% | 59% | 68% |
| Fatigue or lack of energy | 66% | 75% | 70% | 62% |
| Low mood or rapid mood changes | 56% | 63% | 67% | 50% |
| Difficulty sleeping or insomnia | 56% | 51% | 62% | 55% |
| Brain fog (memory or concentration) | 53% | 73% | 65% | 43% |
| Changes in weight or body shape | 50% | 55% | 51% | 48% |
| Joint issues or joint pain | 46% | 60% | 56% | 38% |
| Changes in libido or discomfort during sex | 38% | 44% | 39% | 36% |
| Vaginal dryness, itching or discomfort | 36% | 36% | 36% | 37% |
| Dry or itchy skin | 33% | 38% | 39% | 30% |
| Heart palpitations | 31% | 35% | 40% | 27% |
| Increased headaches or migraines | 26% | 39% | 29% | 21% |
| Urinary infections or incontinence | 19% | 18% | 20% | 19% |
The pattern is clear in the columns. Perimenopause is the phase of fatigue (75%), brain fog (73%), joint pain (60%) and headaches (39%), all at their highest. The menopause transition brings the peak in low mood (67%), heart palpitations (40%) and sleep difficulty (62%). Post-menopause is dominated by temperature regulation (79%), while brain fog falls back to 43%. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025.
How Severe, and How Often
84% of women who have gone through or are going through menopause said they experienced symptoms. Of those, 13% described their symptoms as severe and significantly affecting their life, 33% as having a moderate impact and 38% as mild. Frequency varies just as widely: 30% felt symptoms constantly, 49% occasionally, 17% seldom and 4% never. Among women in perimenopause or the transition, those aged 50 to 54 were the most likely to feel symptoms constantly (39%). Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025.
How women feel about the experience depends heavily on where they are in it. 48% of women in perimenopause and 45% of those in the menopause transition describe their experience as somewhat or very negative, while only around a quarter describe it as positive. Women who are past it are noticeably more positive: among those in post-menopause, 46% describe the experience as positive and 29% as negative. Severity also tracks general health, with only 64% of women reporting severe symptoms rating their health as good or very good.
Menopause and Work
The survey asked women in perimenopause how often their symptoms affected everyday activities. 40% said they felt less able to pay attention at work, 12% frequently and 28% occasionally, and 28% said they were less able to be present at meetings. A smaller group lost time outright: 8% had missed an entire workday because of symptoms and 6% had missed part of one. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025.
The effect reaches beyond work. 27% of women in perimenopause said symptoms caused them to miss social events or meeting friends, and 28% had missed sports, activities or hobbies. Read together, the figures describe a phase that rarely forces women out of work entirely, but that regularly erodes concentration, confidence and the time people normally use to recover from a demanding week.
Seeking Help: GPs, Clinics and Information
69% of women in perimenopause have sought medical support for their symptoms. Of those, 84% went to a GP, 17% to a specialist menopause clinic and 13% to another health professional. When looking for information, women leaned on each other first: 65% asked friends, 53% used official websites such as the HSE’s, and 46% turned to social media. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025.
Specialist capacity has grown since the first Women’s Health Action Plan. Ireland now has six specialist menopause clinics with expanded hours, providing holistic care for women with complex symptoms, and the third action plan, covering 2026 and 2027, commits to extending the range of services they offer. Source: Women’s Health Action Plan 2026 to 2027, Department of Health. The same plan records more than €180 million invested in women’s health since 2020.
HRT: Use, Effectiveness and the Free Scheme
51% of women in perimenopause have taken medication for their symptoms, and use rises sharply with severity: 81% of those with constant symptoms take medication, against 42% of those with occasional symptoms. Among perimenopausal women on medication, 76% take hormone replacement therapy and 22% take natural remedies such as supplements. Satisfaction with HRT is high: 93% of perimenopausal women taking it describe it as effective, 55% very and 38% somewhat. Source: Healthy Ireland Survey 2025. Those medication figures are based on a smaller sub-sample of women, 146 on medication and 107 on HRT, so they carry a wider margin of error than the headline figures.
Cost is no longer the barrier it was. The Free HRT Arrangement launched on 1 June 2025, providing HRT products and their dispensing fees free of charge at the pharmacy to women living in Ireland, where HRT is clinically appropriate and prescribed. It was funded with a full-year investment of €20 million announced in Budget 2025. Source: Department of Health, 1 June 2025. Uptake among pharmacies has been near-universal, with 98% of community pharmacies now providing free HRT. Source: Women’s Health Action Plan 2026 to 2027. The scheme covers the medicine, not the GP consultation needed to prescribe it.
Menopause and Sleep
Sleep is where the menopause data connects most clearly to the national picture. 56% of women experiencing menopause report difficulty sleeping or insomnia, rising to 62% in the transition phase. In the same survey, women aged 45 to 54 reported the worst sleep quality of any group in the country, with only 58% rating it good. Those two findings appear in the same report and point to the same cause, and they are covered in more detail in our sleep statistics for Ireland. The 33% of women reporting dry or itchy skin during menopause also connects to our skin conditions statistics.
Method and Sources
Every figure on this page was checked against its primary source in October 2026. All symptom, severity, work, help-seeking and medication figures come from the menopause module of the Healthy Ireland Survey 2025 Summary Report, published by the Department of Health on 7 November 2025 and read directly from the report PDF; 2,837 women took part in the module, out of a total survey sample of 7,556 people interviewed by phone between October 2024 and April 2025. Population figures come from the CSO’s Population and Migration Estimates, table PEA11, updated in August 2026 with estimates for 2026; the shares of all women and the estimate of roughly 220,000 women aged 45 to 54 in perimenopause or the transition are our own calculations, made by applying the survey’s age-specific phase proportions to the CSO population, and are labelled as such. The free HRT launch date, scope and budget come from the Department of Health’s press release of 1 June 2025; pharmacy participation and the number of specialist clinics come from the Women’s Health Action Plan 2026 to 2027. Figures from self-selected clinic and advocacy surveys are deliberately excluded. The page will next be reviewed when the Healthy Ireland Survey 2026 is published, expected in November 2026, if that wave repeats the menopause module. If menopause symptoms are affecting your life, talk to your GP; this page is a reference resource and not medical advice.
How Salt Cave Paradise Helps
Salt Cave Paradise is a wellness centre in Balbriggan, County Dublin, and women in their forties and fifties are among our most regular visitors. The data above explains some of why: a phase marked by poor sleep, fatigue and less time for the things that help people recover. An hour in a quiet salt room, the flotation tank or the salt water cave is time set aside to rest, and many women book it with friends. Relaxation is a complement to medical care rather than a treatment for menopause symptoms, and the right starting point for symptoms is your GP, particularly now that HRT is free when prescribed. If a calm few hours appeals, you can browse our spa packages or book a session online.
