Islam will become Ireland’s second religion within the next 30 years because of dramatic population growth and immigration.

Statistics compiled by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that Islam is now Ireland’s fastest-growing religion, the Irish Independent reports.

According to the CSO, at its current rate of expansion, Islam is set to become the second religion in the State after Catholicism by 2043.
 
In 1991, Islam accounted for just 0.1pc of the Irish population. That soared to 1.1pc – a 10-fold increase – by 2011, when a total of 49,204 Muslims were resident in Ireland.

While there are indications the growth rate has slowed to 70pc between 2002 and 2006, a strong birth rate and immigration are expected to result in Ireland’s Muslim population exceeding 100,000 by 2020.

However, figures are not available for the population breakdown between the Shi’ite and Sunni branches of Islam.

The latest Census figures also revealed that 84pc of the Irish population describe themselves as Catholic, down from 91.6pc in the 1991 census.

The second fastest growing religion in Ireland is Orthodox Christianity, where numbers have doubled in the space of five years, rising to 45,223 in 2011.

This is almost entirely down to immigration from the former Soviet bloc states where Orthodox Christianity is dominant.

The Protestant religions accounted for some 5pc of the population, dramatically down on figures from 1900-1920.

But the overall population for the Church of Ireland in the Republic is increasing by its greatest rate for almost a century with 129,039 Church of Ireland members in April 2011, an increase of 6.4pc in just five years.