Religious imbalance in North's civil service reversed

A long-standing religious imbalance within the North's Civil Service (NICS) has been effectively reversed following a 10% rise in the proportion of Catholic employees in just over a decade, new figures confirmed today.

There is now almost an exact 50:50 split in representation of Protestant and Catholic staff among Stormont’s 11 departments, according to the government stats.

But with significantly more Protestants than Catholics in the region’s population as a whole (53% to 44%), it appears the employment scales have tipped in the other direction.

Of the 23,500-strong NICS workforce who opted to declare a community background, 49.9% were Catholic and 50.1% Protestant.

This is a marked shift from the religious breakdown in 1996, when the divide was approaching 60:40 in favour of Protestants (59.3% : 40.7%).

DUP deputy chair of Stormont’s Finance and Personnel committee Peter Weir claimed an eagerness to redress past imbalances, particularly in regard to under-representation of Catholics in the higher echelons of the NICS, had resulted in some Protestants losing out.

“The figures released today show the scale of the problem that’s out there and the need to address it,” he said.

“While the focus in the past has been to tackle imbalance in the senior positions, and I think that has now been broadly achieved, problems have now developed in recruitment at the lower entry level, where the proportion of Protestants being employed is too low.

“Ultimately we want to see everyone employed on merit but when obvious imbalances are present I think it’s incumbent on us to address them.”

Mr Weir acknowledged that DFP had taken action to tackle the issue but said more needed to be done.

SDLP DFP committee member Declan O’Loan welcomed the fact Catholic under-representation had been resolved but said a number of outstanding proportionality issues still had to be tackled.

“I very much welcome the fact that the historic Catholic under representation in the Civil Service has been eradicated,” he said

“I understand the broad position to be overall proportional, but with some issues remaining in particular sectors, some favouring Catholic and some favouring Protestants. All these need to be addressed.”

Mr O’Loan said progress been made as the result of fair employment legislation.

Other headline figures in the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) annual report show that a historic gender imbalance had been levelled out.

Whereas men outnumbered women at a rate of 55:45 in 1996, they are now in the slight minority in what is close to another exact 50/50 spilt (49.8:50.2).

The overall civil service workforce grew by 660 (almost 3%) in the last year.

Of the 23,511 permanent staff, 22,389 were classified as non industrial and 1,122 were industrial.

Last month, NISRA revealed that civil servants took an average of 11 days sick leave last year – absence which cost the taxpayer £21m (€23.4m).

Staff at the Department of Social Development appeared to be the most prone to ailments, with a collective sickness rate of 14.6 days in 2008/09.

While overall sick leave across the 11 departments was down on the previous year’s 12.9 days a year average, the government failed to meet its target of reducing it to 10.2 days.

The total days lost to illness accounted for almost five per cent of all available working hours in the year.

The latest NISRA study estimated the average full time civil service salary at £19,647 (€21,945).

One quarter of staff earned £16,136 (€18,000) or less, while one quarter earned £26,086 (€29,116) or more.