§ Mr. BeggsTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if she will provide a breakdown of the religious composition of(a) the training staff employed at each level and (b) the trainees at each Government training centre in Northern Ireland at the latest date for which figures are available. [82193]
§ Mr. IngramResponsibility for the subject in question has been delegated to the Training and Employment Agency under its chief executive, Mr. Ian Walters. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from Ian Walters to Mr. Roy Beggs, dated 28 April 1999:
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has asked me, as Chief Executive of the Training and Employment Agency, to reply to your question about the religious composition of staff and trainees at the Agency's Training Centres.I have consulted colleagues in the Department of Finance and Personnel which, on behalf of the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) and as required by the Fair Employment (Monitoring) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1999, maintains monitoring information on the composition of the NICS. In carrying out this function the Department is required to protect the confidentiality of monitoring information held on individual members of staff and of groups where the community background of individuals could be deduced.In addition, the Department seeks to ensure that the use it makes of such monitoring information is compatible with the actions or measures it might lawfully take to address any lack of fair participation revealed by monitoring. In practice this means that the NICS does not maintain monitoring information by grade for the staff employed in Training Centres, who constitute a single occupational group. The breakdown of the community background of these staff at 1 January 1999, the latest date for which information is available, is:
Number Percentage Protestant 123 52.3 Roman Catholic 85 36.2 Not determined 27 11.5 The Training and Employment Agency also monitors participation in its programmes and services in line with its commitment to equality of opportunity and fair treatment.The Agency's 10 Training Centres are responsible for managing approximately 2,700 places on the Agency's Jobskills programme out of a total number of 14,700 Jobskills trainees. There are approximately 120 other training providers delivering the Jobskills programme.The community background of trainees in Training Centres, derived from monitoring, is as follows:
Number Percentage Protestant 775 38 Roman Catholic 1,231 60 Not determined 37 2 I hope you find this information useful.