BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland are increasingly divided in their outlook and less willing to live and work together, a survey published Tuesday found.
The Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, based on interviews with 1,800 adults conducted in October-December 2001, documented substantial Protestant antagonism to the 1998 peace deal.
The study, which has a margin of error of around 1 percent, found strong majorities on both sides of the community did share one key belief — that the distinction of British Protestant and Irish Catholic would split their society forever.
Among Catholics surveyed, 54 percent said they were happy with the peace process, while just 26 percent of Protestants shared that optimism. Many more Protestants registered their feelings as either "mixed," "unhappy," "disappointed" or "betrayed."
While two-thirds of Catholics said they felt confident or optimistic about the future, as high a proportion of Protestants said they had mixed feelings or fears. And while 65 percent of Catholics said they believed both sides of the community had benefited equally from the peace process, 63 percent of Protestants countered that Catholics had benefited more.
Perhaps most surprisingly — given that the core of the peace deal involves a joint Catholic-Protestant government formed in 1999 — both sides of the community increasingly say they would prefer to live, work and send their children to schools exclusively among their own.
While majorities still prefer to mix, the survey found that 32 percent of Protestants and 22 percent of Catholics favor single-religion neighborhoods; 21 percent of Protestants and 14 percent of Catholics prefer single-religion workplaces; and 37 percent of Protestants and 29 percent of Catholics want their children kept academically apart. All these figures represented substantial rises from the 1999 survey's responses to the same questions.
The lead authors, University of Ulster researchers Joanne Hughes and Caitlin Donnelly, said in a statement it was crucial for politicians and community activists "to explore the factors contributing to recent negative trends and to identify strategies that might address the concerns of both communities."
In recent months Northern Ireland's growing sectarian tensions have been on violent public display, particularly in riot-struck parts of Belfast, where rival Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods are divided by a growing network of security fences called "peace lines."
Protestant hard-liners from the Orange Order brotherhood are planning their biggest parades of the year Friday to commemorate a 1690 military victory of Protestant King William of Orange over the Catholic James II. Such parades have been a divisive hallmark of Northern Ireland since its foundation as a predominantly Protestant state 80 years ago.
Increasingly the Orangemen have found themselves battling Northern Ireland's predominantly Protestant police force, which is reforming in hopes of winning greater Catholic support. On Sunday, 24 officers were injured when they blocked Orangemen from parading through the main Catholic section of Portadown.
When asked what they thought of police reform, 59 percent of Protestants said it had already gone too far, while 82 percent of Catholics thought it was about right or not enough.
Some 68 percent of Catholics said closing British army bases was an important part of peacemaking; 61 percent of Protestants disagreed.
But when asked whether they thought religion would always divide Northern Ireland society, 89 percent of Protestants and 81 percent of Catholics agreed that yes, it would.