 A recent study has found that Irish people between the ages of 16 and 29 rank among the most religious in Europe. The study, conducted by St Mary's University in London and the Catholic Institution in Paris, found that 54% of Irish people in this age bracket identify as Catholic. Overall, 61% of those surveyed identified as religious, a statistic which has come as no surprise to D.C. Chaplin, Philip McKinley. When you look at all the analysis, 18 to 25 years at the lowest level, levels of religious practice. So I was expecting, you know, that this is a post-religious context and therefore I probably arrived here as a pessimist. And because of that, I've actually been very pleasantly surprised in some ways. We've got an interfaith centre here. We have, we make 200 cups of tea and coffee every day. We have 400 users every day. And I mean, certainly on my to-do list, I am burning the candle at both ends and the level of engagement is really, really high. So I've been very pleasantly surprised. But there's also that huge diversity of religious tradition. There's a huge range of world religions here and people that practice world religious beliefs. So there's something really exciting about the new diverse contexts that were in D.C. was particularly diverse university. With the secular trends becoming more popular in Irish society in the last decade, many students on campus were surprised by the studies revelations. I think with like the interfaith centre and the church down in Patts and everything in all Hallows, I think people are kind of practicing doing things that are like more meditation stuff, but they call it Catholicism and they call it that they're faith. But I don't necessarily guard statistics. I wouldn't be shocked if you told me not statistic because especially university like D.C.U. tends to be a fairly liberal population in a sense, you know. I wouldn't imagine that they're practicing and if that is like that they say that they're practicing it's probably just Easter and Christmas, I would imagine. Even though societal trends do not reflect statistics shown, it is clear that religious practice still plays a vital role in young Irish people's lives. Michelle Townsend, D.C.U. TV News.