The bullshit 50-50 recruitment discrimination legislation is making it more difficult for migrant workers to get jobs in the PSNI, which can't possibly help the service when it's trying to deal with members of the ever-growing ethnic minority group in Northern Ireland.

It's fairly common knowledge that the legislation was ridiculous enough to start with by virtue of defining only 2 groups of people, Catholic and 'other,' for the purposes of police recruitment. Now Miss Fitz at Slugger O'Toole has pointed out the relevant part of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 which shows that Polish applicants, despite being overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, are lumped in with the already oversubscribed "non-Roman Catholic applicants" group, which makes it more difficult for them to gain employment in the force. Admittance to the Catholic group for 50-50 recruitment is reserved for those defined by monitoring regulations as "belonging to the Roman Catholic community in Northern Ireland". Why they didn't just go ahead and say nationalist, I don't know. It's probably more accurate and a damn sight more honest.

Last year nearly 1000 Poles applied for jobs in the PSNI (12% of all applicants). It certainly would be helpful to have a few officers who understood Northern Ireland's newest residents and one of the largest minority communities here, not to mention ones that are more removed from the sectarian crap that goes on here. At the very least they should be exempted altogether from the 'positive' [sic] discrimination imposed on the police.

The 50-50 recruitment policies may have been a necessary evil at the time, but with Catholic officers already numbering 20% after such a short space of time there will soon be no justification for it and this situation just highlights the blatant hypocrisy. As of 23rd March 2006 there were a total of 21 ethnic minority officers, only 2 of whom were Seargents. Apparently it's not just Protestants getting the raw deal here.

Here's what needs to happen, as I see it. In the next couple of 12 months Sinn Fein will slowly begin to back the police. At this stage the numbers of Catholic applicants will most likely increase significantly. Shortly afterwards (6-12 months) there must be an announcement that after another 12 months, the discriminatory recruitment procedures currently in place will be ended. By that time the number of Catholics in the PSNI should have edged to somewhere between 25 and 30% and can therefore even out naturally over time without discriminating against and alienating the other 55% of the population.