The numbers of Irish people turning to evangelical churches has increased over the past 25 years with congregations rising to around 30,000, a survey has found.
Over 400 evangelical churches have been established in the Republic of Ireland - up from 150 in 1980.
Sean Mullan, the national director of Evangelical Alliance Ireland, said: "There is a great mixture of people within evangelical churches, so two-thirds of them are Irish, and the other one-third are a whole variety of people from many different nations.
"The numbers of people who have come from a traditional Irish Catholic background have increased as well; almost half of the people in the evangelical church would have come from that kind of background."
Around 65 per cent of those attending the churches are Irish, with 43 per cent hailing from a Catholic background.
Many immigrants to Ireland have an evangelical background, with one in three attendees at evangelical churches raised outside Ireland.
Despite the increase over the past 25 years, evangelical Christians make up less than 1 per cent of the total population.
Mr Mullan said the reasons for people turning to the churches were not given in the interviews among pastors from 250 of the known evangelical congregations.
But he said: "I think one thing is definitely the whole idea of a community, the opportunity of being a part of the community. . . . The average evangelical church is somewhere around 75 people, so that would be a very different experience to what a lot of people would have had in, say, a parish church."
The evangelical church community includes churches from a variety of Christian traditions, such as Baptist, Assemblies of God, other Pentecostal or Charismatic churches and independent fellowships.
Mr Mullan revealed evangelical churches in Ireland extend back over 350 years, but only 35 per cent of around 400 evangelical churches in the Republic of Ireland existed before 1980.
Around 40 per cent have been founded in the past decade. There is a church established in 26 counties, with over 50 churches spread throughout Cork city and county and 150 in the Dublin region.