SEARCH Journal

The 2011 Censuses – what do they tell us that is new?

Two Sundays during Lent 2011 were chosen by the census authorities for the Census: Sunday 27th March in Northern Ireland and Sunday 10th April in the Republic. A question on religion continues to be asked in Ireland, north and south, decade by decade ever since 1861. The most recent Censuses – before 2011 – were held in Northern Ireland in 2001 and in the Republic in 2006 and 2002. In 2011 both census schedules included a “box” labelled “Church of Ireland” for individuals to mark. The two census offices, the Republic’s Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), were busy during 2012 and 2013 publishing an immense amount of data from their respective censuses: some of that data referred to the questions on religion.

* Full article available in printed copies.

Malcolm Macourt

A retired academic social statistician, is the author of Counting the People of God? The Census of Population and the Church of Ireland. (C of I Publishing, 2010)