NORTHERN IRELAND: CIVIL SERVICE RECRUITMENT

HL Deb 18 April 1983 vol 441 c469WA

Lord Hylton

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they have commissioned, or will commission, studies of the denominational composition of Civil Service recruitment in Northern Ireland comparable to those recently published on the ethnic origins of recruitment in Leeds.

The Earl of Gowrie

Her Majesty's Government have not commissioned any studies of the denominational composition of recruitment to the Northern Ireland Civil Service or the home Civil Service in Northern Ireland. Recruitment to the Northern Ireland Civil Service is the independent responsibility of Her Majesty's Northern Ireland Civil Service Commissioners, who operate under authority of the Civil Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1975 to recruit on a basis of open and fair competition with selection on merit. The equivalent provision for the home Civil Service is the Civil Service Order in Council 1982.

The Northern Ireland Civil Service comes within the scope of the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act 1976, and the Fair Employment Agency established by that Act has, in exercise of the powers vested in it by Section 12, been conducting an investigation of:

1. (a) The present religious composition of the Northern Ireland Civil Service;
2. (b) The effects of recruitment over the past few years upon the religious composition of the service; and
3. (c) Promotion patterns within the service.

The agency intend to publish a formal report of their findings in due course.