The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd John Neill has issued the following statement regarding the 2002 Census figures.

The figures relating to the Church of Ireland in the Republic do not come as a surprise to me. When visiting parishes I have noticed an increase in many congregations, particularly in rural areas. I am very pleased to have it officially confirmed. The figures, however, bring home to me afresh the challenge that faces members of the Church of Ireland, alongside that facing each of the Christian Churches.

Several important facts are reflected in the figures:

1. In many parts of the Republic, and indeed overall, there are now many centres of growth in the Church of Ireland and the decline in the Church’s population has been halted.
2. There are people claiming allegiance to the Church of Ireland who may not be in close touch with their local parishes. This reminds all members, clergy and lay alike, of our responsibility as a Church to minister to them.
3. There are also fellow Anglicans from sister Churches overseas making their home in Ireland and though we see many of them in the local parishes, we are not doing enough to make our churches more welcoming and open to cultures and worship other than our own.

+John Dublin

The following information is from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) website and can be found at http://www.cso.ie/census/pdr_comment.htm#relig

RELIGION

Table Q summarises the population by main religious groupings in 1991 and 2002.

Table Q Population by religious grouping, 1991 and 2002

In interpreting the changes, which have taken place between 1991 and 2002 in the number of adherents to various religions, account should be taken of the different question formulations used in the two censuses. In the earlier census respondents to the Religion questions were asked to "State the particular denomination. If none write None". In 2002 the Religion question contained tick boxes for "Roman Catholic", "Church of Ireland", "Presbyterian", "Methodist", "Islam" and "No religion" with provision to write in other religions. While it is not possible to quantify this questionnaire effect, it is likely to have distorted somewhat the comparison between the tick box categories used in 2002 compared with the corresponding responses, which were written by respondents, in the 1991 Census.

The number of Roman Catholics recorded increased by 234,300 or 7.3 per cent between 1991 and 2002. However, as the percentage increase was lower than for the population as a whole over that period (11.1%), the share of Roman Catholics in the population fell from 91.6 per cent in 1991 to 88.4 per cent in 2002.

There were sizeable increases in the numbers recorded as Church of Ireland (including Protestant) (+26,400), Presbyterian (+7,400) and Methodist (+5,000). This reversed the long-term decline recorded in previous decades and may, in part, be due to the questionnaire effect mentioned above. However, immigration since 1991 is the principal reason, with almost 27,000 in total of immigrants indicating that they belonged to one of these three religions.

The number of Muslims and Orthodox adherents experienced major change since the 1991 census, the former almost quadrupling and the latter increasing from less than 400 adherents in 1991 to over 10,000 in 2002. Both categories have also been clearly affected by immigration flows.

The number of persons professing other stated religions more than doubled since 1991 as well as those who indicated that they had no religion. Those not stating a religion fell by 5.1 per cent.

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