IRELAND’S first atheist church is without a spiritual home after the Dublin branch of the Sunday Assembly, a global movement of godless congregations aimed at bringing together non-believers, floundered after mere months.

Sanderson Jones, a British stand-up comic who founded the international not-for-profit network in London last year with fellow comedian Pippa Evans, said volunteers struggled to devote enough free time to organising monthly gatherings.

About 120 people attended the first “service” at the Little Museum of Dublin on St Stephen’s Green in November, and an assembly in Belfast followed in December. Both were stops on a tour led by Jones and Evans, who set up the first assembly in a deconsecrated church in north London, in an effort to launch the network across Europe