The number of people in Ireland who identify as Catholic dropped by ten percentage points, according to newly released Census data.
According to the Central Statistics Office, more than 14pc of the population now identify as having no religion.
The figures are included in the latest release from Census 2022, which was carried out in April last year.
This morning the CSO published its fifth set of results from the population wide survey.
It said that the percentage of the population who identified as Roman Catholic fell from 79pc in the 2016 census to 69pc in the most recent Census. The number of people with no religion increased by 284,269 to a total of 736,210, which the CSO said was more than 14pc of the total population.
People aged between 25 and 29 were the least likely to be Catholic, with 53pc of this age group identifying what was once the dominant religion of the country. Over a quarter of that same age group identified also identified as having no religion, which was the highest proportion among any age group.
The CSO said that religious identity varied by citizenship, with 70pc of Polish citizens being Roman Catholic and more than 41pc of UK citizens having no religion. According to Census 2022, almost half of Indian citizens were Hindu and nearly 66pc of Romanians were Orthodox.
The latest publication from the CSO also gives new insights into both citizenship and immigration into Ireland in the year before the national survey.