The results of the 2021 census in Northern Ireland are due on Thursday, with expectations of a Catholic majority in the UK-run province for the first time in its history.
The region, which was plagued by decades of sectarian violence beginning in the 1960s, was carved out 101 years ago with an in-built Protestant majority designed to ensure power to pro-UK unionists.
The 2001 census showed a 53-percent Protestant majority with 44 percent of the population identifying as Catholic. The party has also dominated recent opinion polls south of the border, putting Sinn Fein on course to hold the balance of power in both Belfast and Dublin following scheduled elections to the Irish parliament in 2025.Unionist politicians have attempted to downplay the link between the census and a so-called border poll on continued British sovereignty of Northern Ireland.
They claim checks on goods from England, Scotland and Wales -- designed to protect the European single market because of the open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland -- putting the province's place in the wider UK under threat.
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