Northern Ireland's new police service will draw enough applications from Catholics to satisfy religious quotas, according to the agency in charge of recruitment.
As the second advertising campaign for trainees was launched yesterday, director of the Consensia Partnership Mr Philip Heaton predicted that 50 per cent of new recruits to the force would be Catholics, as envisaged by the Patten report.
He said Sinn FΘin's refusal to sit on the Police Board was unlikely to have a significant impact on applications.
"I don't think we will have any problem achieving sufficient numbers for the police to be able to operate the 50/50 selection. In the long term, there's no reason to believe that the proportions of Catholics applying won't reflect the proportions of Catholics at large," said Mr Heaton.
In the first phase of recruitment, 35 per cent of the 7,500 applications came from Catholics. Of those, about 150 Protestants and 150 Catholics were selected. These recruits are expected to begin their training over the next few weeks.
The new campaign began last night with TV advertisements being shown throughout Ireland. But Mr Heaton said it would be next week before it emerged if demand matched the level of the first campaign. "The fact that 35 per cent of applicants first time around were from the Catholic community, and 40 per cent were women, reinforces widespread community confidence in the independence and credibility of the new process."