Last summer while Liz and I were over in Dublin, the 2011 census had just been completed several weeks prior. Today the first set of data has been released, and thought I’d list a few things that seemed worth noting:

The population of Ireland has increased by 348,404 people to 4,588,252. (The largest the population has been in a century and a half!)

The census found that over 50% of the inhabitants of Ireland live within the province of Leinster (the province Dublin is in).

Divorce has increased by 150% since the last census in 2006.

The number of people who list themselves as non-religious jumped 45% to almost 270,000 (up from 186,300). The increases is largest in the Dublin area.

While the number of people who claimed to be Roman Catholic grew by 4.9%, as a percentage of the overall population, they fell from 86% to 84%.

Of those between the age of 25-29, 13% claim no religion.

Those were some of the things that jumped out at us & seemed worth some prayer.  Love to hear if any of the info caught your attention.

A couple of links if you’d care to learn more:
The Journal
Irish Times
The full report (.pdf) can be found here (religion info starts on page 42)