I don't know if anyone can tell us how exactly the Church arrives at its "Members" figure. It likes to talk about billions so the fact that Cloyne diocese might be 1000 minus 3 is probably discounted as negligible. Even if every single one of the 12007 people who downloaded the Count Me Out form actually pursued their defection process successfully to the end (which we know is not the case) it still might not be reflected in the numbers the Catholic Church claims for Ireland.
However, even with the official defection process suspended, technically any self-declared atheist has given the Church sufficient grounds for excommunication so... perhaps that's a route to investigate. Of course excommunication doesn't render you a non-Catholic. It merely means you're a Catholic who's been damned to hell.
