Ireland has been a mainly Catholic country for many years – but the number of people who still class themselves as Catholic has gradually declined in recent decades. There are now people with a variety of religions in Ireland.
In 2016 – the census recorded that there were 78.3% of the population of Ireland who identified themselves as Roman Catholic. This is a total of 3.73 million people who identify themselves as Catholic out of a total population of 4.76million.
Fivetyears earlier , in the 2011 census, the percentage of Catholics was 84.2% (3.86 million)
About 10% of the Irish population say they have no religion.
The second most popular religion in Ireland is Church of Ireland – there were 126,000 people in the 2016 census that said their religion was COI.
Islam is the third most popular religion – with 63,000 people identifying themselves as Muslims in the 2016 census.
Followers of the Orthodox religion are close behind in 4th with 62,000. Other Christians are fifth with 37,400.
The fastest growing religions in Ireland , according to the census , between 2011 and 2016 in percentage terms were Orthodox, Hindu and Muslim.
Three areas in Ireland in the 2016 census had more than 1 in 3 of the population as non-Catholic – they were Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire and Galway City.
Tipperary has the lowest percentage of non Catholics at 12.9 per cent.