For some unionists, discrimination in 50:50 recruitment in the PSNI, whereby 50% of new recruits had to be "members of the Roman Catholic community", was perhaps the bitterest of bitter pills swallowed to garner nationalist support for policing here. The silver-lining appears to be that it is actually working.

Although it's impact upon clear-up rates and general police effectiveness is questionable, the 50:50 recruitment practice is succeeding in recruiting more Catholic police officers. In 1998 the percentage of RUC officers from a Catholic background was 8.3%; in February 2008 this figure for the PSNI was 23.7%. Paul Goggins, the minister responsible for security matters in Northern Ireland, said that this put them on course to achieve a target of 30% in 2010/2011.

Follow up:

"So what?", you may well ask, but once the target is reached the discriminatory recruitment practices will be ended. Hopefully by that time sufficient inertia will exist such that applications can be judged solely on merit without distorting the balance too much (although I am reminded that the RUC was initially intended to have one-third of its officers from a Catholic background).

Perhaps it's too much to hope, but maybe when that magic number of 30% is hit the recruiters can focus on recruiting officers of the right calibre, rather than the right religion.