ABSTRACT
Many voices have been raised recently to argue that Ireland has become "secularized", that the social, economic, and religious changes of the past decade have turned Ireland away from its traditional faith and made it indistinguishable from the other materialist, secularist, consumerist, neo-pagan countries of Europe. While there has not been a significant change in involvement in church related activities during the nineties, it is interesting to note a slight increase among those in their middle years of life. It is precisely in those two birth cohorts as well as those born in the seventies that there has also been an increase in the proportion having no religious affiliation in the decade. Although the Irish are relatively firm in their religious faith and still by the criteria of faith available in this project, the most religious people in Europe, they have much lower levels of confidence in their religious leadership at end of 1990s than they did at the beginning.
