Northern Ireland is growing ever more Catholic, ever more Diverse

Graphic from Irish Times available here.

It's becoming ever more clear that the old order in Northern Ireland is dying out. No longer are protestants in the numerical ascendency; rather that section of the community now falls under the growing shadow of the youthful Catholic class.

"About 52 per cent of those normally resident in Northern Ireland and who were or are being raised as Catholics are under the age of 35. The equivalent figure for the Protestant community is 40 per cent."

You can read the Irish Times report here.You can read the Irish Times report here.

Though that should be tempered with the observation that the old equation "Catholic = nationalist" is no longer absolute. According to the census of 2011:

"Only 57 per cent of those who are Catholic or were brought up as Catholics ticked the box marked ‘Irish’."

Read more on this in the News Letter here.

Another qualification:

"75 per cent, of new arrivals in Northern Ireland from the 12 countries which joined the EU since the previous census in 2001 is also Catholic."

Read more in the Irish Times here. In another article here, the Irish Times said:

"Headline figures from the 2011 census showed that some 20 per cent of the population regarded themselves as “Northern Irish”. But the latest analysis reveals that this figure is roughly equal across all age groups and is prevalent equally among Protestants and Catholics."

As well as becoming more Catholic, Northern Ireland is becoming ever more diverse, ever more secular and ever more 'normalised' as per Jeffrey Peel here.

Below is a graph from an article in the NewsLetter which you can read in full here.




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