Ireland was already becoming far more diverse in religious and ethical belief – by 2016, 10 per cent of the population was non-religious. But this influx meant that, even if the old orthodoxy had not become untenable, the pretence that there was one way of being Irish could not have held. Immigrants came from 180 countries. Polish passed out Irish as the second most spoken language in the home in Ireland. In 1981, 93 per cent of the population was Catholic. By 2016, that was down to 78 per cent. The fastest growing faiths were Orthodox Christianity, Pentecostalism, atheism and Islam. In a very
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