Sinn Féin calls for raising of Catholic PSNI target

Sinn Féin is to press the Government for more Catholics to be recruited into the Police Service of Northern Ireland than the targeted 30%, it was revealed today.

The Patten Report on reforming policing in the North set a target 30% Catholics to make the PSNI more reflective of the community it serves and for the target to be achieved by 2010.

Chief Constable Hugh Orde revealed in his annual report published today that positive discrimination in recruitment had so far pushed Catholic representation up to 24%.

In 2001 Catholics made up just 8% of the service and a legally-enforced system of ensuring 50% of all recruits are Catholics has been used to push up numbers.

Applications to join the PSNI are hugely oversubscribed, he said, saying there had been over 80,000 applicants to join since 2001 from people seeking to fill around 400 posts a year.

Orde said they were “well on the way to the target of 30% set by Patten for 2010.”

He added: “We have a service which is increasingly representative of the community in terms of religion and gender.”

The number of women in the PSNI has also increased from 14% to 22% and is still rising, he said. Positive steps were also being taken to recruit more officers from ethnic minority groups.

However, Sinn Féin Policing Board member Alex Maskey MLA said his party wanted more than 30% representation.

“We would not be satisfied with that, we have always said Patten was a bottom line – there is still a long way to go to get the PSNI fully representative of the community”.

For Sinn Féin, he said, it was not just simply about Catholics and Protestants, but making the service fully representative of the community.

“We are going to continue working on that, whether there is new legislation or pro-active measures, we need it to be fully representative.”

And he said republicans wanted civilian PSNI staff to be much more representative as well, adding: “Not a damn thing has been done about that”.

The report, detailing already published policing performance figures - including a 10.5% drop in recorded crime in the year to April – is to be delivered to every home in the North as part the PSNI’s commitment to openness, transparency and accessibility.

To that end it is also being made available in Braille, large print, audio cassette or in ethnic minority languages.