The proportion of the Irish population who describe themselves as Catholic has reached an all time low of 84-point-2 per cent.
However last year’s census figures, just released today, show the number of people in the Catholic congregation hit a record high, at 3.86 million.
They also show a four-fold increase in the number of people describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or as having no religion between the years 1991 and 2011.
The CSO says that twenty-year period also saw Ireland’s Muslim community grow from just point-one per cent of the overall population to one-point-one per cent.
