Those who say they have no religion have more than doubled from 66,000 in 1991 to 138,000 in 2002, said the figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Almost half of those without a religion were aged between 20 and 39 and of those, 60 percent were male. The number who said they were Roman Catholic increased by over seven percent to almost 3.5 million. However, because of an 11 percent increase in Ireland’s population, the share of Roman Catholics actually fell from almost 92 percent in 1991 to over 88 percent in 2002. The number of Muslims more than quadrupled to 19,000 in the ten years and Orthodox adherents soared from just 400 in 1991 to over 10,000.
