Ireland : Census 2016 says we are older, less religious and speak less Irish

[OnDoutside]

Some 22,500 more people left country than came in during the five year period to 2016

Ireland is now a country with older and less religious people and with more migrants and travellers, and we are speaking less Irish, according to the first results from Census 2016.

The population of Ireland rose by 3.8 per cent between April 2011 and April 2016, according to results from the Central Statistic Office (CSO) published today.

Based on the census conducted on every home in the country on April 24th last year, the population on that night was 4,761,865. This is the slowest rate of increase recorded since the 1991- 1996 census period.

SNIP

Population change between 2011 to 2016 was largely driven by natural increase, with births outnumbering deaths by 196,000.
Overall migration patterns over the five years revealed that 22,500 more people left the country than entered it.
There are 810,000 foreign-born people in Ireland, representing 17.3 per cent of the population. The number of Poles was virtually unchanged, and they remain the largest single foreign nationality in the country, followed by the UK and Lithuania. The largest increases in foreign nationals since 2011 were from people born in Romania and Brazil. Meanwhile, the number of people holding dual Irish nationality almost doubled from 55,905 in 2011 to 104,784 in 2016.

There were significant changes in the responses to questions about religion, with 78 per cent of the population, or 3.7 million people, declaring themselves as Roman Catholic, a fall of 132,220 from 2011, when Catholics represented 84 per cent.
The second largest group in this category were those declaring no religion, at 10 per cent or 468,420, an increase of 198,610 from six per cent in 2011.

The rate of increase in divorces is slowing, with an increase of 16,125 compared to an increase of 28,236 between 2006 and 2011.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/census-2016-says-we-are-older-less-religious-and-speak-less-irish-1.3038927