Census Shows Catholics’ Rise in N. Ireland

Census figures, seen as a key indicator of how long British rule of Northern Ireland will last, showed Thursday that Roman Catholics are closing the population gap on Protestants.

Britain is committed to letting the province decide its own future. When Catholics finally outnumber Protestants -- as the trend suggests will happen -- they are widely expected to vote to reunite with southern neighbor Ireland.

But although the proportion of Catholics is higher than at any time in the 81-year history of the province, the statistics suggest there is unlikely to be a majority for constitutional change for some decades to come.

Northern Ireland’s political landscape is defined by the fact that Protestants, who largely want to remain under British rule, outnumber Catholics.

The latest headline figures put the Protestant population down nearly 5 percentage points from a decade earlier, at 53.1%, and the Catholic population up almost 2 percentage points, at 43.8% of the total population of 1.7 million.

Bob Osborne, professor of policy studies at the University of Ulster, said poll evidence suggested that while only a tiny proportion of Protestants would vote for a united Ireland, a significant minority of Catholics back the status quo.