What's worrying about that statistic -other than it's far higher than the real number of kids that can properly speak irish.?
Surely, everyone knows that the teaching of Irish in school has not resulted in the Irish speaking Irish.
I reckon that many of the 31% of the children,( like the 1.77m in the overall census ) misunderstood the word "speak" for ability to string a few sentences together -an ability they'll soon forget.
The religion question is phrased:
What is your religion, followed by 6 choices, Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, Islam, Presbyterian, Orthodox, Other - write in your religion - then follows a nice 20 character space in which to write in your religion, and only then, under the space, does it have the choice of No Religion.
Surely theres a better way to phrase that question, and a better way to frame the answers?
While I do agree with you on this point, having talked to CSO workers, I believe the party line was so that they can keep continuity with previous censuses, which makes it easier to show change over time. I find it a rubbish response, but there you go. One person told me she transcribed a form where someone had given their religion as "viking"!