North moving closer to Catholic majority

FOR the first time since partition, the prospect of a Catholic majority in Northern Ireland is fast becoming a reality, according to the latest census figures.

The politically-sensitive results will be revealed at a 10am press briefing in Belfast today.

They are expected to show the Catholic population now stands at almost 46%, evidence of a seismic shift in the North’s population in the past three decades.

The figure for Belfast is even higher and is understood to have breached the 50% barrier.

The overall result is almost 8% up on the 1991 figure of 38% when the last census was taken. It also shows a steady climb in the Catholic population from previous polls taken in 1981 and 1971.

Many Catholic districts of Belfast are now bursting at the seams, while some Protestant zones are half-empty, illustrating a demographic change which may have huge political consequences.

“Belfast is now a city with perhaps a small Catholic majority,” according to Eamonn Phoenix, politics lecturer at the city’s Stranmillis College.

“Historically that’s terribly symbolic. Here you have a city which was the unionist citadel and which had a Catholic population of only 25% until the 1960s.”

The changing make-up of Northern Irish society is sure to worry beleaguered unionist leaders and has significant consequences for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which enshrined the principle of consent to unity.

When partition was instituted in 1921 Protestants were in a two-thirds majority over Catholics.

Mitchel McLaughlin, Sinn Féin chairman, said yesterday it was a question of “when, not if, a majority in the north favours Irish unity”. Another Sinn Féin source said that some analysts were even predicting a united Ireland by 2016, the centenary of the Easter Rising. “The momentum is gathering fast,” he said.

“Unionists say a certain percentage of Catholics want to remain British but there is also a fair number of Protestants who would not have any objections to unity.”

However, recent calls for a referendum on the North’s future have come from unionists, with David Trimble saying a so-called border poll would “take the border out of the political debate for many years to come”.

“There’s always been a proportion of Catholics who have been supportive of maintaining the union,” said Bob Osborne, Professor of Policy Studies at the University of Ulster.

Professor Osborne made it clear though, that the census figure could vary between 43% and 47% depending on whether non-Christian denominations were included.

“Obviously, Unionists will want to include them because that would reduce the overall Catholic figure. On the other hand, nationalists will not want them used because that would weaken their case,” he said yesterday.