The government has withdrawn a recruitment campaign for 1,000 Border Force officers after discrimination concerns were raised in Northern Ireland because the jobs were restricted to British passport holders.

The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland contacted the Home Office to point out the adverts were potentially unlawful under the Good Friday agreement.

Eileen Lavery, head of advice and compliance at the commission, said the Home Office recruitment “could exclude a large section of the Northern Ireland population who identify as Irish, hold no UK passport and, in many cases, hold an Irish passport”.

Labour’s Northern Ireland spokesman, Tony Lloyd, also raised concerns about the government’s commitment to the Good Friday agreement and to having no hard border after Brexit.

The jobs are being advertised as part of a drive to have more than 1,300 additional border staff in place for the end of the transition period in 2020.

Among the posts advertised were 21 in Belfast. The jobs were described as “reserved post”, which are restricted “to UK nationals, ie: British citizens, British subjects under part IV of the British Nationality Act 1981”.

The Equality Commission had discussed legislation in Northern Ireland with the Home Office in January but the passport issue did not arise until the adverts were posted online last week.

The Home Office withdrew the ads immediately and said it would relaunch them with the correct wording.

It said an error had occurred when the roles were advertised and it had incorrectly stated that eligibility was based on having a “full and valid British passport” instead of “full and valid passport”.

Fewer than 900,000 people identify as British in Northern Ireland, with a further 533,000 identifying as Northern Irish and 513,000 identifying as Irish, according to the 2011 census.

The Democratic Unionist party MP for East Belfast, Gavin Robinson, described the row as “noise” and has written to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, for clarification on recruitment policy in Northern Ireland.

“The news that the government plans to recruit Border Force staff in Northern Ireland is a clear admission they share our concerns that they may not to live up to their commitments on the future of the UK-Ireland border post-Brexit,” he told the Irish News.

No legal action is being taken as the Home Office removed the adverts immediately.

It is the second time the Home Office has been caught out by the special arrangements in Northern Ireland for those who identify as Irish. A Derry woman won a court case in relation to her American husband on the grounds that she was an Irish passport holder and her spouse was not required to go through immigration procedures for third-country nationals.