More than one third of University students, 37 per cent, believe abortion is sometimes morally acceptable, a survey reveals.

The overwhelming majority of students disagree with the Church's teachings on divorce, artificial contraception and pre-marital sex, the survey on religious beliefs, carried out by the University Chaplaincy, shows.

When the survey was first carried out in 2003, before EU membership, 60 per cent agreed with the Church's position that divorce is morally unacceptable. This has dropped to 44 per cent.

The survey was sent to 600 randomly chosen students, of whom 421 replied.

Three quarters of students believe there is nothing wrong with pre-marital sex and one in four believe cohabitation should not be approved.

Even though 91 per cent of respondents said they lived with their parents, 44 per cent said they have had sexual intercourse recently. Only 0.5 per cent said they were cohabiting.

The least acknowledged moral teaching was that of artificial contraception, where fewer than 15 per cent said its use was morally wrong.

According to the authors, the survey revealed overwhelming support for marriage as a life-long commitment, despite the fact the respondents preferred divorce to an unhappy marriage and believed divorcees who remarry should not be barred from receiving Holy Communion. Almost all respondents, 91 per cent, said they were Catholics and five per cent claimed to be agnostic.

Sixty per cent said they attended Mass on Sundays and 71 per cent said they received Holy Communion at least monthly.

There was a greater consistency between belief and religious practice and between belief and moral standpoints, University researcher Mary Ann Lauri said.

Compared to the survey carried out in 2003, students had become more liberal on every moral issue they were asked about. But the issue on which students' opinions changed the most was divorce, where opinion shifted by 16 per cent, compared to the change seen with the abortion issue, of 5.6 per cent.