Catholics were under-represented in more than three-quarters of the private companies and public sector bodies targeted as part of the Northern Ireland Fair Employment Commission's 199699 affirmative action programme.
Protestants were under-represented just over 18 per cent, and the commission found that there were "reasonable proportions of both communities" in only six bodies. The 219 firms and bodies with which the FEC has finalised action programmes - 53 in the public sector and 166 in the private sector - represent more than a third of Northern Ireland's workforce.
These figures are contained in the 10th and final annual report of the commission, which is due to be subsumed into a new Equality Commission, bringing together the FEC, the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Council.
The report also noted that the proportion of Catholics in the RUC rose by only half a per cent - from 7.7 per cent to 8.2 per cent - between 1995 and 1998. Catholic applications to the police and its related organisations rose to 17.3 per cent in 1995-98 from 10.5 per cent in 1990-94.
The commission emphasised the importance of the RUC "actively pursuing outreach policies to try to achieve a target Roman Catholic application rate of 40 per cent", but if this was not achievable, special measures might be needed to bring about a more representative police service.
Overall, employers were praised for their commitment to fair participation by both communities, noting that "against the background of the community conflict in Northern Ireland, it has taken considerable courage for employers to openly and publicly commit themselves to affirmative action".
In his introduction to the re port, the commission's outgoing chairman, Sir Robert Cooper, who has overseen the implementation of fair employment legislation in the North for the past 23 years, stressed that annual monitoring reports had shown considerable advances in Catholic participation in the workforce there.
The most recent statistics showed this now stood at 39.1 per cent, "significantly closer to the proportion of Catholics available for work (estimated at 42 per cent) than at the commencement of monitoring in 1991 when it was 34.9 per cent". He also pointed to improvements in the representation of Catholics in the public and private sector workforce since investigations by the Fair Employment Agency, the FEC's predecessor, in the 1980s.
Thus Catholic participation in rail and bus companies was 36 per cent in 1988-89 but had risen to 42 per cent by last year. In universities in 1989-90, the Catholic proportion was 21 per cent, rising to 33 per cent by last year. In insurance companies, the number of Catholics had risen from 23 per cent to 32 per cent since 1986 and in building societies from 18 per cent to 32 per cent.
In the Southern and Western Health Boards the Catholic share of the workforce rose by between 6 and 9 per cent since the mid-late 1980s.
"The issue of equality has always been central to the communal political difficulties in Northern Ireland and finding a solution to them," Sir Robert said. "The creation of new structures and the extended reach of anti-discrimination legislation means that the new Equality Commission will be well placed to build upon the work carried out over the past two decades."