Two-thirds of people in the North still support the Belfast Agreement, but a small majority of Protestants would now vote against it, according to a poll in yesterday's Belfast Telegraph.
Carried out between October 8th and 15th by Market Research Northern Ireland, the poll of 1,000 people showed that 88 per cent of Catholics but only 49 per cent of Protestants supported the agreement. Among Protestants this is a 15 per cent drop.
A vast majority of people still want the agreement to work. Among Catholics, the figure is 98 per cent, while in the Protestant community it is 72 per cent, down from 89 per cent in March.
Both Protestants (88 per cent) and Catholics (52 per cent) said they were disappointed at the lack of progress on decommissioning. For 61 per cent of Catholics, RUC reform was, however, the most unsatisfactory issue. Almost 75 per cent of Protestants were unhappy with other parties' commitment to non-violence and the level of support for victims of the Troubles.
Among Ulster Unionist supporters, 80 per cent back the party's "no guns, no government" stance, but a majority of both UUP (82 per cent) and Sinn Fein (97 per cent) supporters believe the setting up of an inclusive executive is necessary for decommissioning to occur.
Most Sinn Fein voters think their party did its best to move the peace process forward over the summer, and 88 per cent would blame unionists for a collapse of the peace process.
Some 72 per cent of Protestants (78 per cent of Ulster Unionist voters) believe the Belfast Agreement could fail due to a lack of "good faith" on the republican side.