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BBC Radio 4 - Frontline

Ophelia Byrne asks why more Catholics aren’t joining the police in Northern Ireland.

After 20 years of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Ophelia Byrne hears rare first-hand experiences of serving Catholic officers, and asks why more Catholics aren’t joining.

What’s it like to be a Catholic police officer in Northern Ireland? And why aren’t more Catholics joining?

Ophelia Byrne sets out to discover, twenty years after policing in Northern Ireland was transformed. On 4 November 2001, the Royal Ulster Constabulary became the Police Service of Northern Ireland, with a new uniform, badge, and flag, and the ambition to be fully reflective of the society it served.

This followed decades of controversy around policing in Northern Ireland. The RUC was a predominantly Protestant force, which, especially during the Northern Ireland Troubles, was proud of its service in the line of duty - and of its sacrifice, seeing hundreds of its members killed and thousands injured by republican paramilitaries. 

But it was often accused by members of the Catholic community of discriminating against them, as the defenders of a highly contested state. In some quarters, a deep distrust of policing was reinforced over decades of conflict, and by the time of the transition to the PSNI, Catholics comprised only an estimated 8% of the RUC. 

Following the Good Friday Agreement, the PSNI came into being as a fresh start for policing. With a contentious affirmative action programme in place for the first decade, the numbers of PSNI officers from a Catholic background soared to almost 30%. But it has since plateaued at around 31%, though the last Census (2011) put the Catholic population of Northern Ireland at 45%. Why?

Gaining rare access to serving Catholic officers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Ophelia finds out about their backgrounds, experiences, what attracted them to policing – and whether widely-held perceptions of what it takes for them to put on the police uniform are actually part of their lives.

Those perceptions range from issues of security and dissident republican threat, to where you live, possible family rejection and/or having to leave communities behind, as well as keeping what you do largely a secret.

But some of those issues, like security, it’s argued, are faced by all police officers in Northern Ireland. So Ophelia asks young people why they feel more people from a Catholic background are not taking up a policing career today.

This matters, because representative policing was viewed as a cornerstone of the Northern Ireland peace process. And now, even as these long-standing issues of representation remain unresolved, new and very different ones are fast emerging from an upcoming generation eager for change.

Presenter/ Producer: Ophelia Byrne
Executive Editor: Andy Martin

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