Boost for Catholics as 1,000 Poles aim for PSNI
Friday January 12 2007
And the wave of hopeful candidates brings with it positive implications for a service trying to recruit more Catholics.
Nearly 1,000 of the North's burgeoning Polish community have responded to a police recruitment drive - and they are nearly all Catholics.
Poles accounted for 12pc of the 7,749 applicants, which could provide a lifeline for a force that has struggled to attract Catholic recruits.
The move, however, will not be popular in Poland. A report by the Polish police force that was leaked yesterday complained of a shortfall in Poland of up to 16,000 officers because of the vast numbers flocking to Ireland and Britain.
Under the policing reforms, the PSNI must recruit Catholics and non-Catholics equally, and currently only 21pc of its officers are Catholic.
The PSNI advertised in Polish publications north and south of the border to encourage more of the estimated 30,000 Poles in Northern Ireland into their ranks. A further 150,000 live in the South, where the gardai are training Polish recruits.
A PSNI spokeswoman said Poles could count towards the quota of Catholics. "When anybody applies for a post it is up to them to say what religion they are - Protestant, Catholic or other. If they put themselves down as Catholic they will fall within the 50-50 recruitment policy."
She said that the force was delighted with the response from the Polish community.
With a salary of £22,000 (€33,000), a recruit in the PSNI can expect to earn almost four times more than his counterpart in the Polish police.
Meanwhile, calls have been made for a rethink of our immigration policy after it was revealed that 2,500 migrants are seeking work through FAS every day.
This is despite a prediction by FAS that the Irish economy will need a further 500,000 more migrants in the coming decade if we are to sustain our economic growth.
It has been found that 52pc of the 5,000 seeking help on any given day are non-nationals from 94 countries.
Fianna Fail TD Ned O'Keeffe said the figures showed that a change in our current migrant policy - an "open door" policy to all EU workers except those from Romania and Bulgaria - was urgently needed.
"We need to examine our whole immigration policy," said Mr O'Keeffe.
"There seems to be a major contradiction here. On the one hand, FAS is saying we need ½m more migrants workers, and on the other we seem to have 2,500 too many on any given day.
"It looks to me as if there might be displacement of Irish workers going on."
Fine Gael's enterprise spokesman Phil Hogan agreed, saying the Government appeared to be unaware of the extent of the problem.
"This is a very clear indication that the Government has no idea what the level of migration to this country is. We must look at migration policy and need to put in place structures so we do know the true numbers." He said the figures suggested there were a "significant number" of migrants in need of work.
- Dominic Cunningham and Edel Kennedy
