A leading academic has suggested that the 2021 census in Northern Ireland could show Catholics outnumbering Protestants for the first time. Dr Paul Nolan, an expert in social trends and the peace process, told the BBC that the figures of 48 per cent Protestant to 45 per cent Catholic reported in the 2011 census were changing rapidly, with a younger Catholic population making up a larger percentage of the workforce and a majority of the school-age population.
This demographic shift is highly sensitive in Northern Ireland since the political system is based on the sectarian divide and the principle of whether the region should remain in the UK or be united with the rest of Ireland. Protestants overwhelmingly vote for the unionist parties, the DUP and UUP, Catholics vote for the nationalist Sinn Féin or SDLP. The small centrist Alliance and Green parties win support from those who don’t identify with either camp. So even micro-trends such as the exodus of Protestants from rural border areas, or the sectarian makeup of newly built housing estates, are closely monitored to see which side is gaining and which is losing.
Unionists already had a shock in last year’s Assembly election, when Sinn Féin won 27 seats to the DUP’s 28, and was little more than a thousand votes behind the DUP, with unionists failing for the first time to secure a majority of Assembly seats. The gap between the two camps has been narrowing for a long time, but many unionists were still not psychologically prepared for a situation where they didn’t have a secure majority. The approaching census will make them even more jittery.
Beyond the headline figures is a more complicated picture. The census measures religious identification rather than religious observance, which is significantly higher than in mainland Britain but still in decline. There is also a stubborn minority that identifies with neither major tradition, and either ticks “no religion” or leaves that section blank on the census form.
There is an old joke about an atheist in Northern Ireland being asked whether he is a Protestant or a Catholic atheist, but it is true that diversity monitoring forms on job applications ask about “community background” rather than religion. Since religion is a tribal marker, anti-discrimination law is as much concerned with perceived religion as actual practice.
As a result, Northern Ireland’s statistical agency Nisra has developed a range of census questions that can be used to interpret the results. In the 2011 census, the religion question showed just less than 41 per cent declaring themselves Catholic, 36 per cent for the three main Protestant churches (Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist) and around 6 per cent for other denominations (mostly small Evangelical or fundamentalist groups). The figure of 48 per cent Protestant to 45 per cent Catholic came from the “religion brought up in” question.
Another interesting question asked in the 2011 census was that of national identity. Around 40 per cent opted for “British only”, 25 per cent for “Irish only” and 21 per cent for “Northern Irish”, with most of the remainder giving some combination of the three. That doesn’t predict how people might vote in a referendum on Irish unity, but it does show that there is more ambiguity on the question than might be guessed from which parties dominate in elections.
The only referendum to have been held on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland was in 1973, at the height of the Troubles, when 99 per cent of those voting opted to remain in the UK – but on a 59 per cent turnout, with almost the entire Catholic population boycotting the poll.
Nobody can really predict how a new referendum might turn out. It would mean having a serious conversation about what a united Irish state would look like. There are all sorts of possible complications, such as the economy of the two parts of Ireland, Brexit, the likelihood of Scottish independence, and the rapid evolution of an aggressively post-Catholic or even anti-Catholic culture in the South.
Another factor is that much of Northern Ireland’s recent population growth has come from immigration, which was very limited before the 2000s. Much of the immigrant population – Poles, Lithuanians, Portuguese – is Catholic at least by religious tradition, but doesn’t fit neatly into the local sectarian divide. With the limited exception of the Alliance Party gaining support from the Chinese community, local politicians have shown little interest in appealing to these new communities.
But while the demographic gap between the communities has been closing rapidly, there is no guaranteed outcome. It could be that both camps remain short of a majority for the foreseeable future, with the smaller constituency in the centre ground holding the balance. And, when the currently suspended Assembly is restored, its rules require weighted majority voting so that sensitive matters cannot pass without a majority of both communities.
So there isn’t likely to be radical constitutional change in the near future – but demographic parity between the two communities will pose new challenges.
Jon Anderson is a freelance writer
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