The re-introduction of a policy of 50:50 recruitment in order to encourage more Catholics to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) would be “a return to discrimination”, DUP leader Arlene Foster has said.

Responding to a call by Archbishop Eamon Martin, the primate of All Ireland, for the reintroduction of a 50:50 recruitment policy, Ms Foster said such a policy was not “the way to do it”.

She said while the DUP recognised there was an issue in regard to PSNI recruitment and “we want our police service to reflect the community it serves”, she believed “there is much more that nationalism and republicanism, especially in the leadership of political parties, could do to encourage young nationalists, young Roman Catholics to come and join the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and I hope they will do that”.

The police, she said, should be “in Roman Catholic schools... to tell young people how much of a good career it is for them, and of course to take away the threat of violence.

“We all know that Roman Catholic members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and indeed the prison service, have been targeted by bigots, let’s call them for what they are, so there is a job of work to be done.”

Patten reforms

The policy of recruiting equal numbers of Catholic and Protestant police officers was introduced in the wake of the Patten policing reforms, and ran for ten years from 2001-2011.

Approximately 32 per cent of serving police officers are from a Catholic background.

Writing in The Irish Catholic following a meeting between church leaders and the PSNI Chief Constable, Simon Byrne, Archbishop Martin said this figure was “almost 20 per cent short of the percentage of young Catholics who are out there”.

“If you think of that age group of young people in Northern Ireland, almost 50 per cent of those young people are Catholic and I think it should be a matter of concern, not just for Catholic communities, but indeed for the whole community.

“Because if we do not have a police service which is representative of the society that it polices, you immediately begin to run into accusations that the police service is not friendly to Catholic people, or you allow a vacuum to be created which allows others to exploit intimidation and fear in communities.”

In a statement, Simon Byrne said it was “vitally important” that any police service be representative of those it serves, and this was necessary “if the Police Service is to secure maximum support and confidence.”

“Currently there are a number of under-represented groups within our Service which we would seek to recruit from including Catholics, working class loyalists, females, ethnic minorities and members of LGBTQ communities,” he said.

He said the reintroduction of 50:50 recruitment would be a matter for the North’s politicians, but the PSNI would “continue to do all we can to encourage Catholic recruitment and [we] are grateful for Archbishop Martin’s encouragement to Catholics to seek a career in the Police Service”.

A new PSNI recruitment campaign will be launched early next year.

Nationalist support

Both the North’s nationalist parties welcomed the Archbishop’s intervention, and said their stated policy was in favour of 50:50 recruitment.

SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, told The Irish Times that 50:50 recruitment was “a way of beginning to solve the problem” of attacks on Catholic police officers and their families.

“We also, particularly from the nationalist community, need to show support to young people who are prepared to put their neck on the line and join the police.

“This is an Irish police force and we need to show support for it, and any attack on police in our community is an attack on all of us,” he said.

Sinn Féin’s Northern leader, Michelle O’Neill, said the party had put it directly to Simon Byrne that “if you’re going to have public confidence in policing and its ability to deliver, and to actually deliver on the new beginning to policing” then 50:50 recruitment “has to be part and parcel of actually commanding that public confidence.”