We talk about a Decade of Centenaries. I talk about a Decade of Half-Centenaries.
But today is a Decade of ……..a Decade. Today the Census 2011 figures are announced and we must pretend that we are interested beyond the headline figures.
For the record the figures are: Protestant 48% Catholic 45% and “Other” 7%.
It therefore falls to unionists (in this census) to talk up unionism. Religion is not in itself a marker for politics……but it is still the best one that there is. Unionists will attempt to take comfort in the fact that 40% of the population describe themselves as British only and 25% describe themselves as Irish only. A further 20% see themselves as “Norn Irish”.
The number of people holding British passports rather than more expensive Irish ones is disproportionately higher.
What does it all mean? Well……Essentially Catholics/Nationalists can be a bit smug. Protestant/Unionists can look behind the headlines for a statistic that pleases them.
And certainly we can expect some unionist enthusiasm that the second most common language spoken in a Norn Iron household is Polish. And how do we explain that proficiency in Irish is declining. Well is it likely that people are actually forgetting Irish………or just telling the truth about proficiency.
Perhaps the most interesting statistic is that 6.5% of the population in Dungannon, Co Tyrone is from an “EU nation”….in Dungannon the majority of these are (second generation) Portuguese. Is this a bigger problem for nationalists (ourselves alone) or unionists who have not proven to be European enthusiasts or inclusive.
Of course the breakdowns locally will be interesting. Notwithstanding new council areas, it will all have an effect of making the South and West more “green” and there will be some pressure to ensure some social engineering and gerrymandering to limit the impact of the census.
Fair means……unionist “outreach” (and good luck with than one folks) to Catholics. an “integrated” (but unionist) education system. Not so fair means maybe…….like what to do about Belfast ….that jewel in the crown..now 49% Catholic and 42% Protestant.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Agree its all to fight for (in a political sense). The greening of greater Belfast is slowly happening as well.
Interesting times ahead.
http://www.thedetail.tv/issues/155/census-data/the-northern-ireland-census-religion-and-identity-mapped
I think there’s always a little bit misconception/misrepresentation about the national identity issue. The fact that 48% percent of people here are Protestant yet 40% of people consider themselves British is disproportionate to say the least. The figures suggest that a sizeable number of Catholics consider themselves British. I would have no problem with that except that I know personally of catholic friends that consider themselves British. I half expected the “Northern Irish” category to grow with a sort of “mellowing” of younger generations, which to be fair I thought would be higher. So is there an argument that people may put down how they are supposed to be perceived rather than how they perceive themselves? I can’t remember the clarity of the question posed. I’m quite happy to admit most of my friends are Catholics taken on face value the Census suggests that a big proportion of them consider themselves not to be Irish. The majority consider themselves Irish the one that I know of calls himself Northern Irish (yet still votes nationalist) NONE consider themselves British.
‘…..i half expected the “Northern Irish” category to grow….’
I thought this identity question was put in the census form for the first time so there wouldn’t be any previous % to compare with.
My impression is that this was start by the civil service, [who would be of mainly unionist makeup] to blunt the impact of the headline figures as they know it is from now on going to depress their own side. This is intended to falsely inflate the numbers favouring NI identity, I took this from the fact that an identity question would naturally be with the options named as they are officially political entities,[NI, Britain or RoI and that would produce an accurate picture which wouldn’t serve the purpose intended. So, asking for British, Irish, or N Irish would bring in cathiolics who meant to call themselves as Donegal, Cavan or Monaghan would, meaning the region of the island, these catholics answers would be hijacked by the unionist broadcast media into the N Ireland camp.
Not surprising then that BBC and UTV pounced on these figures as the story of the census rather than the [less palatable for them] closing margin of the % figures. Neat work but won’t fool many from either community.