The report provides a comprehensive picture of our children's lives by presenting key information on children’s health, behavioural and educational outcomes as well as their relationships with their parents and their friends. It also presents data on supports and services available to children. SONC provides the most up-to-date data on the National Set of Child Wellbeing indicators, and:
• charts the wellbeing of children in Ireland
• tracks changes over time
• benchmarks progress in Ireland relative to other countries

SONC is widely used as a resource by policy makers, the research community and civil society, and aims to inform Government policy on children, young people and families. The SONC reports are useful for tracking trends in relation to children’s wellbeing, they provide data that shows us where more work needs to be done and presents us with evidence of where progress is being made.

Some of the key findings in the report include:

• In 2023, it is estimated that there were 1,255,738 children living in Ireland. This accounted for 23.2% of the total population
• In 2022, 15.2% of children were considered to be at risk of poverty, up from 13.6% in 2021, while 7.5% of children experienced consistent poverty, up from 5.2% in 2021.
• In 2022, there were 5,626 children in the care of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency down from 5,777 in 2021.
• In 2018, 2.4% of children aged 10–17 reported smoking cigarettes every week. This decreased between 2014 and 2018 (see Table 81).
• In 2018, 89.4% of children aged 10–17 reported never having smoked cigarettes. This increased between 2014 and 2018 (see Table 84).
• In 2018, 6.9% of children aged 10–17 reported having been drunk at least once in the past 30 days. This decreased between 2014 and 2018 (see Table 87).
• In 2018, 69.4% of children aged 10–17 reported never having had an alcoholic drink. This increased between 2014 and 2018 (see Table 90).
• In 2018, 7.8% of children aged 10–17 reported having taken cannabis at least once in their lifetime. This decreased between 2014 and 2018 (see Table 93).