Mr. Alan Todd:

I think the numbers quoted last week show that the organisation is approximately 32% Roman Catholic, for police officers, which is a very healthy figure. That is as high as it has been. The underlying concern debated in the media was that recent recruitment competitions were not bringing through more than 30%, so there will be pressure on the long-term trend. Some of what is helping keep the representation up is that the people retiring are disproportionately from the Protestant community. Therefore, when there is better representation recruited and a high number of people from the Protestant community retiring, the balance of the organisation tends to stay where it has been. Ideally we would like to see in a straw poll that 45% of all our new student officers are from the Roman Catholic community, but because we have not reached that and the long-term trend may come under pressure, that is a strategic concern. There is work going on to see if we can address that.