This article is from page 29 of the 2013-01-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 29 JPG
CLARE is now a more Catholic county that it has been in 110 years but there are also rising numbers of people devoted to other religions in the county, as well as a huge increase among those who don’t believe in any religion at all.
The latest report released on the 2011 National Census of Population by the Central Statistics Office in October revealed that, for the first time since 1901, there are more than 100,000 people who are classed as Roman Catholic living in the county.
The newly released census figures show that there are 101,984 people of Roman Catholic religion in the county – the last time the figures topped the 100,000 mark was with the 1901 census when there were 110,062 Catholics out of an overall population of 112,334.
However, the 2011 census confirms a trend that over the past 20 years has seen significant increases in the nonCatholic population driven by not only growing numbers with no religion but also large increases in the religions of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, coming into the county.
Outside of members of the Roman Catholic faith, the biggest religion, or in this case non-religious grouping, is among member of the population who are of no religion at all or declined to say in their census return of what religious persuasion they were.
There are 6,384 people in the county with no religion – the highest number of areligious people in the county ever and a figure which represents a 4,612 increase over the past decade. A total of 1,795 declined to state their religious faith in the 2011 census return.
The largest religious grouping outside of Catholics are members of the Church of Ireland/Protestant faith that represent 1,960. There are 694 people of Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox persuasion, 283 Presbyterians, 283 Muslims and 52 members of the Jewish faith.