The European Commission was last night asked to investigate a complaint about people from the Republic being barred from holding top civil service posts in Northern Ireland.
Belfast's Lord Mayor and SDLP European election candidate, Mr Martin Morgan, said he had raised a similar problem in the North's Courts Service with the Commission. "The civil service for years has insisted that those holding top posts have to be UK nationals.
"In other words, no Irish need apply. So, even though three of the members of the Executive were from the South, they could not work in top posts in their own departments. This is outrageous and illegal - and the civil service knows it," he said.
Mr Morgan said during devolution when his party was in government with unionists and other nationalists, the civil service's legal advisers had told them that the ban was illegal. However, the north Belfast councillor accused direct rule ministers of doing nothing about it. "We are already challenging this policy here in the North and have asked the independent watchdog for civil service recruitment to investigate this abuse," he said.
"But the level of discrimination in the Northern Ireland Court Service is so bad that we have decided to bring a complaint to the European Commission about it also. Overall, the civil service reserves 25 per cent of its posts to UK nationals only.
"But the SDLP has discovered that in the Northern Ireland Court Service 82 per cent of posts have been reserved to UK nationals in the last five years."