Nearly a third of the PSNI will be made up by Catholics in eight years time, new figures reveal.
The latest recruitment statistics, released by police headquarters yesterday (Monday), indicated that the service is on schedule to meet the Patten Commission's requirement that Catholics should make up 29% of the force by 2011.
The latest figures show that the number of Catholics applying to join the PSNI increased by nearly 800 during the last recruitment phrase.
Catholics made up 36% of the 6,050 people applying to become police officers in the last recruitment drive.
As is stands a total of 540 recruits, made up equally of Catholics and non-Catholics, will now become members of the PSNI.
The latest figures come after a senior PSNI official appeared to dismiss claims made by the DUP's Ian Paisley Jnr in February that there would only eight new recruits would be joining the police, claiming that only four Catholics had applied to join the force.
"A complaint has been made to me from inside the police that only eight new officers can start on April 27," Mr Paisley said at the time.
"We are wasting millions of pounds on training and recruitment because of 50:50."
But PSNI senior director of Human Resources Joe Stewart said yesterday that the latest recruitment figures did not bear out Mr Paisley's claims.
Mr Stewart said that 55 recruits had started police training on Sunday and that a further 48 recruits would start training in June.
But Ian Paisley Jnr last night insisted that he stood over his original claims.
PSNI statistics show that Catholics currently makes up 12.2% of the force compared to 8.45% in 2001.
