Suggestions that the North's Protestant population is being passed out numerically by Roman Catholics are wide of the mark, asserts GrahamGudgin
A small industry is growing up which disconcerts Northern Protestants by exaggerating the scale and urgency of Catholic population growth in Northern Ireland.
Until recently, the clear market leader was Tim Pat Coogan, but earlier this week a competitor emerged in the shape of the London Independent's Northern Ireland correspondent, David McKittrick, with others enthusiastically following his lead.
Forecasts of the imminent demise of the Protestant domination are a long-established feature of political life on this island, stretching back to the millenarian Pastorini prophesy of the 1820s and beyond that to Lilli Bulero in 1688.
Even so, it is depressing to observe the willing gullibility of so much of the media in latching onto the latest batch of flimsy evidence.
The Independent published two pieces by McKittrick last Tuesday. One, stressing the uncertainties in population data, was little noticed.
A much more precocious piece on the front page, under the title "Protestants losing majority in Northern Ireland", attracted widespread comment. In this, the numerical supremacy of Protestants over Catholics was said to have "dwindled to no more than a few percentage points, the result of years of large-scale political, social and economic changes".
Three unnamed statisticians and demographic observers were quoted, thereby inventing the new concept of the confidential statistician, too shy to be identified. Two of the sources gave the current Catholic proportion of the Northern Ireland population at 46 per cent and 45 per cent respectively, plus in each case a further 4 per cent of "other". The third source gave "a private opinion" that Protestants may make up just 49 per cent.
Another "expert" - it was not clear if this was one of the three quoted earlier - was quoted thus: "If the Protestant majority has not already disappeared, it will do so within a few years."
None of this can be checked and little of it appears to be grounded on any firm statistical foundation. In fact, a reliable estimate of the current Catholic proportion exists in the Northern Ireland government's Continuous Household Survey. The latest figures, for 2000-1, give the Catholic population at 42 per cent, Protestants at 53 per cent and those with other or unknown religion at 5 per cent.
If we reasonably assume that some of those in this last category had a Catholic community background, then the overall breakdown might come out at about 42- 44 per cent Catholics, 56-58 per cent Protestants and others. The margin of error for both figures would be close to 1 per cent.
Since the equivalent figure for Catholics in the 1991 census was 42 per cent, these government estimates for 2000-1 may show some significant growth over 10 years, but however we look at them, the growth is short of that indicated by Mr McKittrick's experts.
These are not the only relevant figures produced each year by the Northern Ireland statistical authorities. An annual census of schoolchildren gives a good estimate of the religious composition of pupils at different levels of school, and the Labour Force Survey does likewise for people of working age.
These figures and estimates for numbers of retired people results in an estimate of the Catholic share close to 44 per cent.
The figures for schoolchildren were referred to in the McKittrick article but once again his figures were misleading. Although he correctly reported pupil numbers as 173,000 Catholic, 146,000 Protestant and 22,000 "other", he omitted to say that 98 per cent of this "other" category were in the more Protestant state-controlled schools rather than in Catholic schools.
The likelihood is that the overwhelming majority of these "other" pupils were from a Protestant cultural background even if they do not consider themselves to be Protestant in the religious sense.
THE importance of the school figures is that, without a primary school majority, Catholics will never form a majority through natural increase alone. Much will then depend on migration, but we will know relatively little about its religious composition until the 2001 population census figures are available towards the end of this year.
For the present there is little point in republicans becoming excited about demography achieving what bombs could not - nor should loyalists lose too much sleep about being outvoted in any imaginable time-scale. Both should also note that the figures quoted above include children. Among those of voting age, Northern Ireland's Catholic proportion of the population is estimated to be lower, at around 40-42 per cent.
Those who imagine a fast-approaching Catholic majority also fail to recognise that elsewhere in the First World, Catholic birth rates have not only fallen, but have gone below those of Protestants. This has happened in southern Europe and in Quebec. Whether it will happen in Northern Ireland remains to be seen.
Dr Graham Gudgin was until recently special adviser to Northern Ireland's First Minister, Mr David Trimble