Job disparity in North `a blight'

The current situation where Catholics are twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestants is a blight on the Northern social, economic and political landscape, a Belfast human rights body has told the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

The Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) called for the official encouragement of legitimate affirmative action and the setting of ambitious but realistic goals and timetables for the reduction of the disparity in the numbers of Protestants and Catholics who are unemployed.

While setting job quotas or operating a form of reverse discrimination to reduce the Catholic jobless total would be illegal, the CAJ told the committee in Stormont yesterday that there were other forms of affirmative action applicable.

"Limited forms of affirmative action would be fair," said a CAJ member, Prof Barry Fitzpatrick. "Any conscientious employer should be allowed to provide bona-fide affirmative action programmes, and should not be prevented by legislation from doing so."

He suggested a greater focus on the long-term unemployed could help reduce the jobs imbalance. Equally, concentrating on bringing new jobs to areas of high unemployment, and allowing the bulk of recruitment from these disadvantaged areas, could also help lessen the imbalance.

Prof Fitzpatrick, of the University of Ulster, said Northern Ireland had the most advanced fair employment legislation in Europe.

If the problem was to be properly tackled there must be sufficient British government investment in bodies like the forthcoming Equality Commission. Prof Fitzpatrick told the committee, which is chaired by the former Conservative Northern secretary, Mr Peter Brooke, that it must also be ensured that companies tendering for public contracts were fulfilling their fair employment obligations.

Mr Martin O'Brien, the CAJ director, said more jobs per se would not address the jobs differential. "Social problems need to be addressed by investment in areas of greatest need. Policies that are blind to where social need exists won't target the problem.

"The debate often has been what is the cause of the differential when our focus is on what will shift the problem," he said.