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.
Politics of Northern Ireland
While there is a strong correlation in Northern Ireland between religious background and the perception of which geographical area forms the nation to which that person feels they belong, it is not a strict relationship and national identity is not simply distributed proportionally in accordance with the percentages of different religions in a particular area. For example, Catholics overall are almost five times more likely to view themselves as being British only, than Protestants are to view themselves as being Irish only. In the 2011 census there were four of the twenty-six districts in Northern Ireland, all on the eastern seaboard, where Catholics were more likely to view themselves as being British than Irish; Carrickfergus, Larne, North Down and Ards, whereas even in those districts where Protestants were most likely to view themselves as Irish, such as Derry, Fermanagh and Newry and Mourne, Protestants were still more than ten times more likely to view themselves as British than Irish.