The DUP has got its figures on fair employment in the North "completely right" and the conclusions it draws from them "completely wrong", according the North's Equality Commission. Sinn Féin and the SDLP agree with the Commission.
Northern catholics are still twice as likely to be unemployed as protestants. However, last week, the DUP's East Londonderry MP, Gregory Campbell, claimed to have delivered "a devastating blow to those who have believed the myth of discrimination against Roman Catholics."
Campbell said that in 1992, 235,330 Protestants were in full time employment, "a drop of about 4,500." RC's, however, present a "startlingly different" scenario. In 1992, 132,694 were in full time employment and in 2002 there were 154,218 of them – a rise of 21,500. "This can only mean," said Campbell, "That new jobs are being allocated disproportionately to Roman Catholics." There was "no other rational explanation."
On the contrary, said the Equality Commission's director of policy and research, Eileen Lavery. "You can't just look at those numbers," she said. "It is misleading for a start to talk about catholics getting the 'new jobs'. The figures represent the net effect of all the millions of jobs that have come and gone in the period. He has forgotten that you have to look at the wider picture.
"There was an under-representation of catholics when we started. The objective is to measure progress towards the goal of fair participation in the workforce. The figures show that there is a trend towards that, though we are not there yet. They do not show that Protestants are getting a raw deal. In fact, their representation in the workforce still exceeds their availability.
"Catholics have a younger age profile than protestants so they form a greater proportion of those available for work. Protestants make up 64% of those aged 45 to retirement, but only 50% of those under 34. The figures don't show that protestants are being turned down for jobs which then go to catholics."
In 1933, back in the old days of the protestant state for a protestant people, Sir Basil Brooke appealed to unionists to "employ Protestant lads and lassies" and declared that he himself "had not a roman catholic about the place." Catholics tended to be concentrated in lower skilled jobs, and the powerful higher echelons of the civil service are still 70% protestant.
However, Campbell blames catholics for the continuing unemployment differential. In 1999 he claimed that one of the key reasons was the catholic birthrate: "educational qualifications have been shown to be lower for school leavers from large families."
When monitoring was introduced in 1990, catholics represented 35% of the workforce but were 40% of the available workforce. Now, they represent 40% of the workforce, but because the catholic population has risen, they represent 42% of the available workforce.
The DUP also claims the attempt to recruit more catholics into the police by way of the 50/50 rule demonstrates discrimination, whereas the fact that 90% of the force are protestant does not.
