Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Top cop hints at return of 50/50 PSNI recruitment
Only 20% of Catholics successful in tests
A RETURN to 50/50 recruitment of Catholics and Protestants into the PSNI may be considered, a senior officer said yesterday.
Recent efforts have struggled to sign up enough Catholics, with only 20% successful in merit-based competitions.
The recruitment process has been significantly shortened in a bid to improve the statistic – 400 more officers are being sought.
Temporary Deputy Chief Constable Stephen Martin refused to rule out a return to the Patten-era reform. He said: “I would encourage people with influence within the Catholic community to encourage and advocate for people in this community to step forward and apply to join the PSNI.
“If that does not happen and our Catholic success rate were to continue as in the last few campaigns, it would be inevitable that in future years you might start to see the Catholic composition of the organisation fall.
“That would be unacceptable and I think in those circumstances all options would need to be considered.”
The 50/50 mechanism was established to rebalance a force largely comprised of members of one side of the community.
Nationalist politicians viewed it as a success, but unionist politicians claimed it unfairly discriminated against Protestants.
Mr Martin noted it had delivered a significant increase in Catholic representation, from 8% to 32%.
A report by consultants Deloitte into more recent issues found the opinion of family and friends sometimes deterred members of the Catholic community from joining.
The report also said many Catholic applicants dropped out of the recruitment process ahead of the initial selection test because they were hiding their application and did not want to attend an examination centre.
Steps to address that include taking the test online.
Around a third of the force is Catholic at present.