Press release from
The Iona Institute

277,000 may belong to
‘no religion’ but this doesn’t mean they’re purely
secular

October 18,
2012 – NEW
CENSUS figures released today show that the number of people living in Ireland
who say they have ‘no religion’ (including self-identified atheists and
agnostics) has increased fourfold since 1991 and stood at 277,237 as at last
year.

However, we have no real way
of knowing exactly what people mean when they say they belong to “no religion”
without further study.

A new
survey by the prestigious Pew Forum in the US found that one in five
Americans doesn’t belong to any religion.

However, when this group was
questioned further, it was found that half considered themselves to be either
‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’, and a fifth pray at least once a
month.

Commenting on the new Census
figures, David Quinn of The Iona Institute said: “While Census 2011 clearly
shows that the number of people living in Ireland who genuinely have no religion
is increasingly rapidly, we still have to treat the figures with a certain
amount of caution. Not belonging to any particular religion is not the same as
being irreligious.”

He continued: “As the Pew
Forum survey indicates, ticking the ‘no religion’ box can simply mean a person
doesn’t belong to any particular religion, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they
are purely secular in their thinking, let alone that they are atheists. The fact
that half of this group in America say they are religious or spiritual shows
this”.

The Census also breaks down
those who ticked the ‘no religion’ box by nationality. One-third are non-Irish
(to adopt the term used by the Census itself), while the remainder are
Irish.

Chinese people living in
Ireland were the most likely to tick the ‘no religion’ box (more than 70
percent).

Finally, while 84 percent of
the total population self-identified as ‘Catholic’, almost 90 percent of Irish
nationals did so.

ENDS

Notes to
Editors

The Iona Institute is a
pro-marriage, pro-religion think tank.