What’s woke about recruiting Catholic cops?
Why Police Service of Northern Ireland is having a hard time convincing Seamus and Róisín to sign up
The official effort to achieve a 50-50 ratio of Catholic to Protestant PSNI officers has been abandoned.
Affirmative Action. Quota System. Meritocracy. Words and slogans from the front lines of America’s battles over hiring police officers are on the air in Northern Ireland too. But ethnicity has nothing to do with the Belfast debate. It’s not about the color of one’s skin. It’s about the content of one’s prayer book.
PSNI is the national police force of Northern Ireland, created in 2001 as a result of the Good Friday Agreement that ended The Troubles.. The idea was it would handle the duties of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which had been 90% plus Protestant since it took over policing in NI after Ireland was partitioned in 1921.
Part of the deal by which PSNI came into being was that it would strive to hire one Catholic cop for every non-Catholic cop on the force. 50-50 they called the plan. Considering that only 8% of officers were Catholics in 2000, the goal seemed impossible. It was. By 2011 Catholics made up just under 30% so Boris Johnson’s government in London declared victory and ditched 50-50.
“In a population of 1.9 million in Northern Ireland, 46% of residents are Catholic and 43% are Protestant. In the PSNI, the ratio of Protestants to Catholics is 67% to 33%.”
Which doesn’t mean PSNI stopped trying to attract Catholics. It’s just really, really tough.
Imagine you’re a young man or woman who grew up Catholic near Belfast and you’re considering a career in law enforcement. Would you look to a force where your co-religionists have often been less than welcome and are underrepresented? Or would you look south to where there’s a police force that’s 89% Catholic: An Garda Síochána in the Republic of Ireland. The pay is better - $50,000 a year to start vs $35,000 up north. (There’s an extra $4,000 a year in what’s called “damage money” with the PSNI.) And you won’t have to fear your dissident Republican neighbors. Some of hem still consider a career with PSNI a serious betrayal of the Nationalist cause and would just as soon rig your car with explosives as buy you a pint.
No wonder PSNI can’t recruit enough Catholics.
One Notable Exception
When it comes to the differences between Catholics and Protestants in the North, your first name says a lot. If it’s hard to pronounce or non-standard (Diarmuid, Siobhan) you’re branded as Catholic. Since 2022, Liam Kelly has been chair of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, aka the police union. Top brass in the PSNI and politicians didn’t make a big deal of the fact that a Catholic had been elevated to such a position. No press releases. No social media blasts. In fact, the only news item on the subject said, “...understood to be the first Catholic officer to hold the position.” Kelly has never confirmed he’s a Catholic. But it’s hard to imagine Protestant parents with the improbable surname Kelly naming their son Liam. (Unless they once listened to “A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash.)
Kelly believes the biggest obstacle to Catholic recruitment is potential retribution from those damn dissident Republicans. It’s called “the fear factor.”
“A number of impediments are there to make Catholics turn away from a job in policing. We still have the threat that’s posed by murderous dissident gangs and that’s a big issue for people in areas where these thugs operate,” Kelly said.
Sticker on a light pole in West Belfast posted by Nationalists discouraging Catholics from cooperating with (much less joining) the PSNI.
The Pro and the Con of Catholic Recruiting
Assistant Chief Officer Clare Duffield, Head of People & Organisational Development PSNI - “Policing is a career that makes a difference to our society and as such we seek to recruit talented, dedicated people from all backgrounds and walks of life.”
Mervyn Gibson, a former PSNI counter-terror detective who is now grand secretary of the Orange Order - “It's important the police reflects the community it serves. However, the best candidates who apply should be taken. Standards should not be dropped for any section of the community. There should be no consideration given to the re-introduction of either quotas or 50:50 recruitment.”
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