The Irish Times published an article with the headline “Young Irish people among the most religious in Europe” where it went on to say that young Irish people have the 4th highest attendance at church services. However, the significance of the percentage of young people identifying as having no belief at 39% seemed to be lost. 39% is about 4 times the percentage of the total percentage of people that identified as having no religion in the 2016 National Census.
This is the generation that are/will be having children that will be in our schools in the next 10-20 years. It is most likely that these children will be raised without a religion (given that most children tend to be raised with the same belief system as their parents.) This raises massive questions for the 97.5% of primary schools that are under religious patronage.