The number of same-sex marriages has dropped following an initial spike after the marriage referendum in 2015, figures from the Civil Registration Service show.

In the first year same-sex marriage was legal some 1,056 couples officially wed. This fell to 759 in 2017 and was down to 664 last year. Same-sex marriages accounted for just over 3 per cent of the 21,052 marriages registered last year. Sixty-six of the same-sex couples who got married last year had been together in civil partnerships beforehand.

Figures also show that 75 individuals applied to have their gender legally changed last year, up from 60 the previous year, but slightly less than the 77 who did so in 2017. Fifty-six people availed of the legal change in 2015, the first year of the operation of the new gender change Act which allows individuals to change their legal gender based on their own self-assessment.