Tomorrow (Saturday) marks the anniversary of the first graduation ceremony for recruits to the new Police Service of Northern Ireland. Irish News chief reporter Sharon O'Neill speaks to a key official in the 50/50 recruitment process and examines how successfully change is being implemented
A year has passed since the reformed Northern Ireland policing service began its journey into a new future. Joe Stewart, the man at the helm of the 50/50 recruitment process introduced under the Patten reforms, says the numbers of Catholics signing-up to the force is "holding steady".
And the 47-year-old is no stranger to navigating uncharted, and controversial, waters. The former personnel director of Harland and Wolff shipyard, in east Belfast, once again finds himself facing the challenge of redressing the religious imbalance in an overwhelmingly Protestant workforce.
As the senior director of human resources in the new-look police service, he has overseen the recruitment of the 520 trainees who have emerged from Garnerville Police Training College in the first year of the new scheme's existence.
But to achieve the recommended 30% "threshold" of Catholic officers by 2010, the personnel chief's work has only just begun.
"We have successfully recruited 520-odd new police constables and next year looks like being just as successful," he says.
"If I take all the competitions (recruitment drives), and we are now in competition five, so far, 35% on average are Catholics. The Catholic [percentage] of the population as a whole is around 43 percent, so the application rate is only eight percentage points off that. And that is without the support of Sinn Féin for the current policing arrangements.
"It would be reasonable to assume that if Sinn Féin formally endorses the policing arrangements we will see that application rate exceed 40%."
He adds that approximately 21,000 people have applied to join the service over the last year, and 7,600 of those were from the Catholic community.
"That is a lot of people who are prepared to consider a career in policing as a future," he says.
"In this current competition (recruitment drive), which doesn't close until April 11, we have so far received over 8,000 requests for application packs and 3,000 application packs have been returned fully completed."
With the number of Catholics joining "holding steady", and an encouraging number of women entering the force, has Mr Stewart noticed any trends as to where Catholics applying to join come from?
"Thus far they have come predominately from the areas where the Protestant community would be in the majority. That is not to say that people have not been applying from strongly nationalist areas. Catholics have been applying from places like Derry, and nationalist areas of Belfast such as Andersonstown, Beechmount, Clonard, Glencolin and Whiterock.
"They are small numbers, but in the overall recruitment plan it shows willingness for people to apply, and the numbers have been gradually increasing from people applying from strongly nationalist areas."
However, Mr Stewart revealed that the number of Catholics seeking to become part-time officers was nearly 10% lower than Census figures for Catholics living in the four areas targeted so far.
"There were 2,400 applications for 130 jobs. Of those, 450 were Catholics – 19 percent of those applying.
The actual census figure was 28% for the four districts, so we are actually nine% adrift of the census number.
"It is something we will have to discuss with the Policing Board to decide where to go next. It is disappointing but not surprising because people are watching where political support lies for policing and are trying to make up their minds on that basis.
"I still think that 450 Catholics interested in part-time policing is quite a high figure."
Some unionists, who have been resistant to Patten from the outset claim that the scheme has led to "poorly educated Catholics" being recruited at the expense of "better qualified Protestants".
Mr Stewart bluntly describes such comments as sectarian.
"Just over 40% of those applying are from a graduate background, and the percentage between Protestant and Catholic are broadly the same.
"Similarly, those applying with GCSEs and so on are broadly the same Protestant and Catholic percentage.
"And those applying with no qualifications at all – which is about four and a half% of the overall application rate – are the same whether they are Protestant or Catholic.
"So there is no difference in terms of educational qualifications between Protestants and Catholics.
"This is something that is an undercurrent of rumours and so on, cited by those who have a sectarian outlook, who do not want to see Catholics applying to join the service."
While Sinn Féin's backing would obviously yield results, other factors are still putting young Catholics off joining the force.
Not least among these is the threat from dissident republicans – which has already seen one Catholic trainee escape injury in a car bomb attack.
Mr Stewart was quick to acknowledge the sacrifices and risks taken by young Catholics pursing a career in policing.
"People do want to work in the police service, they do see it as an attractive career and, notwithstanding the risks associated with it, they continue to apply. I had some concerns after the dissident attack on the student officer in Ballymena in June last year, that we would see people start to pull back, but there is no evidence of that.
"I think it underlines the courage of everybody that applies, but particularly young Catholics. It says a lot for them."
He says recruits are now given more detailed security briefings on the risks.
"Some student officers have had some difficulty," he says, "but every single one of them have remained in the service."
Despite the Catholic Church lending its support to the new policing arrangements almost 18 months ago, Mr Stewart feels its must go further.
He calls for a more vociferous public effort to encourage its flock to both support and join the force.
"I am a Catholic myself, some of the Catholic bishops made initial supportive comments. My personal view, and the organisation's view, is that that is not enough.
"I think more could be done. If you look at Patten, he talks very much about the community as a whole, and church leaders particularly, encouraging people to pursue careers in the police service.
"The career of a police officer needs to be valued as the vocation it is and I'm not sure we are there yet.
"The Catholic Church is not, and I am not suggesting it should be, a recruitment agency for the police.
"But I think those of us who have come through a Catholic education system will know that in the past preference and encouragement was given to the legal profession, teaching and the medical profession.
"It still seems to be a more acceptable career within the Protestant community and not within the Catholic community and it is down to people who have got influence in society to change that. It is a vocation, like teaching and nursing."
Asked if the police service could do more to attract more Catholics, he answers: "We are advertising as widely as we can, we are engaged in a range
of outreached measures through Consensia Recruitment.
"It is holding focus groups in different parts of Belfast, trying to find out what it is that actually attracts young people, whether they are Protestant or Catholic, into the police service.
"We continue to be involved with those schools that we can be involved in, in terms of careers guidance and support."
But has Catholic recruitment been affected by police actions? There have been claims that police have failed to fully tackle loyalist violence, criticism over the handling of interface disturbances, and an unprecedented apology from the Chief Constable over the high profile raids on Sinn Féin offices in Stormont.
"I am a civilian. It is very hard for me to actually deal with that," Mr Stewart says.
"This is the world we live in, there is nothing to indicate that this is a major disincentive to Catholic recruitment.
"Public opinion tends to be coloured by public disorder – how it is dealt with in one community as opposed to another – and that could change from week to week.
"At the end of the day police have to deal on the ground with circumstances as they see best and deliver policing to a community as they see best."
A recent Human Rights Commission report highlighted a number of concerns over police training.
These included a claim that an observer had seen trainers offer recruits graphic "instruction" on violent methods of disabling assailants, as well as a claim that police training was not addressing cultural differences.
Mr Stewart, however, insists that the report's concerns have now been add-ressed and training has been adjusted.
"It was not that we failed to address sectarianism, but that we actually created a too-politically correct environment. Their argument was that we created an artificial training environment that didn't reflect the environment outside Garnerville. This is a very difficult area for us because our whole thrust is, 'let's make sure that we have a totally neutral environment'.
"The question of the comments by trainers... First of all, the individual who made the comments has been addressed in terms of it being indicated that the comments made were inappropriate and unacceptable.
"We have developed a new training module which has replaced that.
While Mr Stewart has been in his current job for a relatively short period, he previously worked with the Police Authority and Harland and Wolff – two organisations whose pasts have not been without controversy.
"I designed completely new terms and conditions of employment (at H&W) and a completely new structure within it and I was then invited onto the board to implement these changes.
"My biggest difficulty was dealing with the chill factor – that Catholics did not want to cross the bridge into Queen's Island – because they were fearful about the implications there.
"The other thing we were doing was to try and hold a mirror up to the workforce as a whole, to say 'the sort of conduct that happened here in the past is no longer acceptable'."
Mr Stewart was chief executive of the Police Authority – a police watchdog scrapped under Patten and heavily criticised by nationalists who accused it of failing to make the old RUC accountable.
"I became a member of the Police Authority because I thought it was my duty as a citizen to show support for the police service of the day, I didn't necessarily agree with everything that was taking place," he says.
He says that any criticism of the Police Authority, has to be "seen in the broader political context".
And he says the broadening support for policing has fuelled positive change.
"If the Policing Board today has been successful," he says, "it has been successful because there is broader political agreement around policing than there was before."
