Tuesday, October 23, 2012

88% of Longford is Catholic

The latest figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that 88% of the population of Co Longford is Catholic.

The CSO figures released last Thursday, the latest publication in its series of Census 2011 results, show that 34,313 people of the county described themselves as Catholic. This is the largest number of Catholics in the county since 1946.

In total, 88 per cent of the total population was Catholic, an increase of 11 per cent since 2006. This compared with an increase of 4.9 per cent to 84.2 per cent of the population for the State as a whole.

The total of those with no religion, atheists and agnostics increased more than six-fold between 1991 and 2011 to stand at 1,087 or 2.8 per cent of the population of the county in 2011. 

This represents an increase of 666.9 per cent since 1991, a far larger increase than the Leinster or national average.

There were 1,241 members of the Church of Ireland in Longford, accounting for 3.2 per cent of the population in the county in April 2011, according to the CSO figures.