Catholic majority wouldn’t alter political reality in Northern Ireland: Stephen McCarthy

Stephen McCarthy was commenting ahead of the publication on Thursday of the latest census information – which is expected to show that Catholics outnumber Protestants for the first time.

Statistics relating to national identity and passports held will also be included in the information release.

Mr McCarthy, who grew up in west Belfast, said a steady rise in the percentage of Catholics over many decades has not led to more votes for nationalist political parties.

He said that although people are recorded as ‘Catholic’ due to their Catholic background, there are a significant number who are not actually practising Catholics, in the same way many ‘Protestants’ are no longer church attenders.

“Anybody who has spent any time looking at the demographics of this place for the last fifty odd years would have foreseen that this [slight majority] was going to be the case, but even though in census after census we see a rise in the Catholic population... election results and every survey that looks for support for a united Ireland hasn’t really shown any major shift that corresponds to this population rise,” he said.

“The nationalist electorate hasn’t grown – the vote between Sinn Fein and the SDLP hasn’t grown much over the last 20 years – it has just been redistributed around and has coalesced around one party.

“I suppose whenever you are grasping at straws to justify your political and constitutional aspirations you will look to things like this for evidence to back you up, but most people see through it.

“I think we have moved beyond that. I think the idea that you can automatically assume that someone is a Protestant and therefore a unionist, a Catholic and therefore a nationalist – those days are gone.”

Mr McCarthy unsuccessfully stood as a UUP candidate for South Belfast in the NI Assembly election in May this year, polling more than 3,000 first preference votes.

He said that although he doesn’t believe there is increased support for nationalist parties, unionists must do more to ensure that doesn’t happen.

“Brexit and the instability around that, and around the protocol, has undoubtedly made people think in a way that we probably could have avoided, but that’s not to say that it has changed their minds,” he said.

“But there are an awful lot of people out there who come from the same background as me who have no interest in a united Ireland.”

However, he said that “unionism doesn’t do a great job of selling the Union,” to more Catholics who could be swayed.

“Every time unionism seems as though it’s about to make the right noises to appeal to those people, to broaden the appeal of unionism, another section of unionism shouts ‘Lundy’ and then the knee-jerk happens and we all fall back into line again”.