The unionist, not the nationalist, community bore the brunt of discrimination in Northern Ireland, a DUP MLA claimed in the Assembly yesterday.
During a debate on the progress of measures guaranteeing equality in government in the North, Mr Gregory Campbell said it was "a nonsense and a fallacy to keep saying people are discriminated against in Northern Ireland because they are Roman Catholic."
He cited figures for Catholic recruits to nationalist-dominated councils. In Newry and Mourne District Council, 76.8 per cent of last year's recruits were Catholic, while in Down, Derry, Omagh and Strabane, the figures ranged from 60 to 78.9 per cent, he said.
"Reality checks are needed, big time. The reality is it's our [Protestant] community that's being discriminated against, day in, day out," said Mr Campbell.
Mr Conor Murphy, the Sinn Fein MLA for Newry and Armagh, began the debate, saying that the most recent figures showed Catholics were more than twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestants in the North. He said discrimination had been institutionalised in bodies such as the Northern Ireland Civil Service.
In the face of these figures, Mr Murphy said, Mr Campbell and others reminded him of the Holocaust historian Mr David Irving. "They stand King Canute-like in the face of all historical research and evidence, in an attempt to argue a particular case," he said.
"The incorporation of the equality agenda into the [Belfast] Agreement was a direct consequence of resistance to the systematic discrimination perpetrated by the institutions of this state, including public bodies, for three generations," said Mr Murphy.
"Until that apparatus of discrimination is dismantled, the emphasis on equality must be a major focus in the programme for government of this administration."
Mr Eamonn O'Neill, the SDLP MLA for South Down, said many government departments had fallen short in their efforts to implement equality schemes in line with the legal requirements of the Northern Ireland Act.
Mr Edwin Poots, of the DUP, said nobody should doubt his party's opposition to discrimination of any kind. With this in mind, he asked how recruitment to the new Northern Ireland police service on a proposed 5050 basis could be termed equality.
Ms Patricia Lewsley, the SDLP MLA for Lagan Valley, called for disability equality enforcement bodies "with real teeth" to be put in place in the North, in line with the rest of Britain.
The Ulster Unionist Junior Minister, Mr Dermot Nesbitt, said there was no automatic link between unemployment rates and discrimination. A host of other factors could also intervene, he said. Mr Nesbitt called for moderate language, saying the subject left the two communities ill at ease with each other. "The Catholic community feels it is discriminated against; at the same time the Protestant community is told it is a discriminating group." Both, he said, were wrong.