Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese, the biggest in the country, says its cash reserves will be exhausted by 2041 and that there will be 70 per cent fewer priests within 20 years.
In the archdiocese’s financial statements for 2024, it says that, based on current cost assumptions, existing reserves will be exhausted within 16 years.
With 1.1 million Catholics, the archdiocese is served by 361 priests, a majority of whom are elderly. It projects the number of priests will reduce by 70 per cent within 20 years, with no ordination in 2024 and just two since 2020.
The statements note how Mass attendance remains the main source of income in Dublin, but the “average age of regular Mass-goers continues to increase”.
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The archdiocese said the younger generation were “not attending Mass with the same regularity or commitment as previous generations, ensuring sustainable income in the long-term presents a significant challenge”.
It also means a drop in “the availability of volunteers and individuals willing to take on leadership roles, which are essential to sustaining the charity’s mission and operations”.
Total income from the archdiocese’s 188 parishes in 2024 came to €31 million, compared with €31.1 million the previous year, while total expenditure in 2024 was €34.2 million, the same as in 2023.
An additional seven parishes in the archdiocese are run by religious orders.
In Dublin, the first collections held at weekend Masses, gathering funds to support priests, totalled €14.1 million in 2024, compared to €14.3 million in 2023.
The second (“Share”) collections, in support of parishes, raised €5.7 million in 2024, compared to €5.6 million in 2023.
To address the decline in numbers of priests, the archdiocese has introduced a pastoral strategy called “Building Hope”.
This has grouped parishes into 53 partnerships, with priests now serving multiple parishes, and many of them appointed parish priest to more than one parish.
The strategy emphasises a sharing of resources and greater lay involvement, which can also lead to greater costs, as some lay staff have to be paid where volunteers are not available.
The statements say that “the constantly evolving regulatory environment” can mean “additional strain”.
The number of staff employed by the archdiocese centrally was 44 in 2024, an increase of three on the previous year’s figure, at a cost €2.8 million, up from €2.6 million in 2023.
Their average salary was €54,000 – or a cost of €64,000 each to the archdiocese when pension contributions and other payments are included.
The statements also disclose that Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell is patron to 449 primary schools in Dublin.
There are 178 Catholic secondary schools of which he is not patron, while he has a representative on the boards of an additional 45 secondary schools.
The finances of the schools are not addressed in the archdiocese’s financial statements, as schools report directly to the Department of Education and the Charities Regulatory Authority.
