Little chance of promotion. A range of industries and companies where your religion means you're unwelcome.

Higher poverty levels. A lengthy wait for a house compared to Protestants.

This was the experience of Catholics in the old Northern Ireland which 1960s civil rights campaigners challenged. But everything has changed. The peace process has delivered equality and justice to nationalists. Or has it?

Equality in Northern Ireland:

the Rhetoric and the Reality is a new report from the leading human rights organisation, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ).

It seems that 12 years after the IRA ceasefire, eight years after the Belfast Agreement, and despite Sinn Fein's electoral rise, Northern Catholics still face substantial disadvantage.

It's commonly believed that the decline of the North's traditional industries, with their strongly Protestant workforces, and the arrival of new companies, has dramatically improved Catholic employment prospects. But Catholics are seriously under-represented in half the North's 15 largest private-sector employers. With a 7,700-strong workforce, supermarket chain Tesco is the biggest company.

According to the North's last census, Catholics represent 43% of those available for work. Catholics account for 33% of Tesco's workforce.

It's far worse in other big firms. Catholics represent only 15% of employees at aircraft manufacturers Short Brothers, the North's second largest employer. Catholics are seriously under-represented across the aircraft industry. Protestants account for 81% of staff at George Best Belfast City Airport and 75% at Belfast International Airport.

Queen's University Belfast, the North's third largest employer, has a religiously balanced workforce. But at the University of Ulster, the North's fourth largest employer, 63% of staff are Protestant.

Other firms employing over 1,000 people with significant Catholic under-representation include Charles Hurst Motors (78% Protestant); FG Wilson engineering (73% Protestant); Michelin Tyres (75% Protestant); and Maybin Property (73% Protestant).

Catholics are seriously under-represented in the North's two largest banks: the Northern Bank (70% Protestant); and the Ulster Bank (63% Protestant). Protestants are under-represented in the Bank of Ireland (56% Catholic), and the Allied Irish Bank (50% Catholic).

Protestants are seriously under-represented in Dunnes Stores (72% Catholic). The only other large employer with significant Protestant underrepresentation is Derry-based Seagate Technologies (71% Catholic).

The religious imbalance in the energy sector is striking:

Kilroot Power Station (86% Protestant), Northern Ireland Electricity (71% Protestant).

Catholics are also missing in the transport industry. Protestants account for almost three-quarters of Northern Ireland Railways employees.

Less than 5% of staff at the large private company, Wrightbus, are Catholic.

The highest ranks of the civil service are still Protestant-dominated. Catholics are over-represented in administrative and secretarial jobs, but account for just over a third of those in the top three grades which include managers, senior officials, and professional and technical staff.

Catholics are under-represented in the workforce of 15 of the North's 26 councils. Carrickfergus (7%) and Castlereagh (9%) are the worst.

Protestants are under-represented in fewer nationalistcontrolled councils and not as badly. The councils with the least Protestant staff are Newry and Mourne (14%) and Derry (25%).

During the conflict, Protestants were over-represented in the security industry . . . the RUC, UDR/RIR, British ministry of defence, and prison service. While Catholic representation has improved, it's a slow process. Of 17,000 security-related jobs in the North, 12% are now held by Catholics, compared to 8% in 1994. It must be remembered that, traditionally, Catholic applications to the security industry have been low, and Catholic workers in the sector have faced republican intimidation.

Catholics are over-represented in the health service (49%) and education (47%).

The Protestant unemployment rate is nearly 5%;

Catholic unemployment is one-and-a-half times higher.

Catholics are one-and-ahalf times longer . . . 13 months . . . on housing executive (public housing) waiting lists than Protestants. In some areas, Catholic disadvantage is even more pronounced.

On one side of west Belfast's Springfield Road . . . the Shankill, Highfield and Woodvale . . . a Protestant waits, on average, 10 months for a house. On the Catholic side of the road . . . Ballymurphy, Whiterock and Beechmount . . .

people wait three times longer.

In the year until March 2005, Catholics made up 8% of the housing list in east Belfast but secured only one of 91 houses allocated. In south Belfast, Catholics accounted for 39% of the waiting list but secured none of the 44 houses allocated. In north Belfast, Catholics made up 74% of the waiting list but only 36% of those awarded houses. In west Belfast, Protestants represented 28% of those on the waiting list but secured 60% of the housing.

A widespread belief in the North has been that loyalist areas are more disadvantaged than nationalist ones. In 2004, the British government set up its Taskforce on Protestant Working-Class Communities to address this.

The CAJ report acknowledges disadvantage in Protestant areas but challenges the "myth", which dominates British government policy, that Catholic areas have a greater capacity for dealing with deprivation and that nationalists have secured more funding and community development.

Catholics make up 20% of the population in the 500 most affluent census areas, but 72% in the 500 most deprived areas. Of Peace II funding in the most deprived districts, Protestants received £462 per head of population; Catholics £314.

The report challenges the view that Protestants suffer greater education disadvantage. Of the 15 wards performing worst educationally, 13 are predominantly Protestant.

However, CAJ points to Department of Education statistics showing that 7% of those leaving Catholic schools have no qualifications, compared to 5% of those leaving state (Protestant) schools.

Catholic males have higher unemployment rates regardless of qualifications: 20% of unqualified Catholics are unemployed compared to 12% of unqualified Protestants.

Catholics with 'A' level or higher qualifications are twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestants with the same qualification level.

The report also questions the funding decisions of Invest NI, the British government's investment and jobs' creation agency. Already affluent and predominantly Protestant areas have benefited most in assistance: south Belfast (£209m); east Belfast (£103m).

The most deprived areas, those where Catholics are most concentrated, have gained least: north Belfast (£57m); west Belfast (£70m).