Drop in people who identify as Catholic in Tipperary, according to new census figures

Less people identified as Catholic in Tipperary in 2022 than in 2016.

That is according to the new Census 2022 Profile Five- Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity, Irish Travellers & Religion released last week.

The new figures show that 133,100 people, or 79% identified as Catholic.

In 2016, 87% or 138,968 people of the Premier County recorded Catholicism as their religion.

Nationally, 69% of Ireland identified as Catholic, putting Tipperary above average.

The other most common religions in Tipperary were Church of Ireland, Orthodox (Greek, Coptic and Russian) and Islam.

Almost 14,800 people said they did not have any religion. That is a significant increase on the 8,400 people who recorded no religion in 2016.

CITIZENSHIP

Nine percent of the county’s population were non-Irish citizens. The largest group were Polish, followed by UK, Romanian and Lithuanian.

There was an increase in people with dual citizenship from 2,329 in 2016 to 3,904 in 2022.Irish- UK were the largest group, followed by Irish-US and Irish-Polish.

IMMIGRATION

The Central Statistics Office found that 4,025 people had immigrated to Tipperary in the year before the census.

Of those 2,355, had moved from elsewhere in Ireland, while 1,670 from outside the state.

ETHNICITY

White-Irish people accounted for 139,000 of the population of the Premier County.

A further 13,300 identified as any other white, 1,759 as Asian or Asian Irish - Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi and 475 as Black or Black-Irish.

The Traveller community made up 1,434 people, an increase of 17% on the 2016 census.