During our chat yesterday, Jennifer Willis asked how many Jews are living in Ireland today.  As I mentioned, my numbers were a little dated. The 2002 Irish Census found that there were 1,790 Jewish people living in Ireland then. After our chat, I went to look up the 2011/12 census, I learned that there was no box for Jewish people to check off.  Instead, they had to check "Other" and write in their religion.

The form is found here: http://www.census.ie/The-Census-Form/Each-question-in-detail.109.1....

See question #12. 

Members of the Jewish community were very upset about it. (Irish census form omits box for Jews, The Jerusalem Post, 04/13/2006 http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Irish-census-form-omi...)

The Jewish religion recorded 1,984 persons in 2011 up from 1,930 persons in 2006.

Here's the press release summarizing the report:

http://www.cso.ie/en/newsandevents/pressreleases/2012pressreleases/...

Some highlights that I found especially interesting:

Religion

The twenty years between 1991 and 2011 has seen significant increases in the non-Catholic population driven by not only growing numbers with no religion but also large increases in the religions of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. The proportion of the population who were Catholics continued to decline in 2011, to reach its lowest point at 84.2 per cent, while its congregation, at 3.86 million strong, was the highest since records began.

Catholics

Of the 3.8 million Catholics in Ireland in 2011, 92 per cent were Irish while the remaining 8 per cent belonged to a range of nationalities. Among the non-Irish, Poles were the biggest group with 110,410 persons, followed by the UK with 49,761 and between them they accounted for over half of all non-Irish Catholics.

There were 64,798 divorced Catholics in Ireland in April 2011 of which 27,468 were males and 37,330 were females.

No Religion

The total of those with no religion, atheists and agnostics increased more than four-fold between 1991 and 2011 to stand at 277,237 in 2011. This group included 14,769 primary school aged children and 14,478 of secondary school age. There were 4,690 children aged under one year who had no religion. 

Church of Ireland

There were 129,039 members of the Church of Ireland in April 2011, an increase of 6.4 per cent on 2006. This included 13,667 primary school aged children and 8,809 of secondary school age. One in ten Church of Ireland workers had occupations in agriculture and related activities.

Muslims

There were 49,204 Muslims in Ireland in April 2011, a sharp rise on five years previously. Ireland’s Muslim population included 8,322 primary school aged children and 3,582 of secondary school age. Since 1991, the number of Muslims increased from just 0.1 to 1.1 per cent of the total population.

Orthodox Christianity

There were 45,223 Orthodox Christians in Ireland in April 2011 - more than double the number five years earlier (20,798) and more than four times the number recorded in 2002 (10,437).

Other religions

The number of Presbyterians in Ireland in April 2011 stood at 24,600, up marginally on 2006 and continuing a pattern of increasing numbers since 2002 following long periods of decline up to 1991.

The Apostolic and Pentecostal members in Ireland numbered 8,116 in 2006 and 14,043 in 2011. Over 60 per cent (8,486) had African ethnicity in 2011 while 18.1 per cent (2,546) indicated their ethnicity as “Any other White background”.

Census 2011 shows that there were 10,688 Hindus in Ireland in 2011, showing a tenfold increase since 1991. Hindus were younger than the general population with an average age for men of 28.9 and for women of 26.7 compared with 35.5 and 36.8 for the general population.

Other religions in total accounted for 98,643 persons in 2011 or 2.1 per cent of the de facto population at that time.

The largest single religion recorded in the above group was Buddhist with 8,703 persons. Over one third(37.9%) were Irish by nationality. There were 6,842 Methodists recorded in 2011, while Jehovah’s Witness made up the next largest religion with 6,149 persons in 2011. Lutheran (5,683 persons),

Evangelical (4,188), and Baptist (3,531) religions all had greater than 3,000 persons in 2011. The Jewish religion recorded 1,984 persons in 2011 up from 1,930 persons in 2006.