Catholic Church in Ireland
In the 2016 Irish census 78.3% of the population identified as Catholic in Ireland; numbering approximately 3.7 million people. Unlike Catholics in the United States, Ireland has seen a significant decline from the 84.2% who identified as Catholic in the 2011 census.
Diarmuid Martin
At a talk on the future of Irish Catholicism on 22 February 2011 for the Cambridge Group for Irish Studies, Magdalene College, Cambridge, Archbishop Martin said that "there are parishes in Dublin where the presence at Sunday Mass is some 5% of the Catholic population and, in some cases, even below 2%. On any particular Sunday about 18% of the Catholic population in the Archdiocese of Dublin attends Mass. That is considerably lower than in any other part of Ireland." He continued saying: "(That) the conformist Ireland of the Archbishop McQuaid era changed so rapidly and with few tears, was read as an indication of a desire for change, but perhaps it was also an indication that the conformism was covering an emptiness and a faith built on a faulty structure to which people no longer really ascribed" and that "The Catholic Church in Ireland will inevitably become more a minority culture. The challenge is to ensure that it is not an irrelevant minority culture".