Catholic approval of the RUC has risen steadily within the last nine months, according to a survey commissioned by the Police Authority of Northern Ireland.
The poll, which questioned a random sample of 1,072 people in February, found that 44 per cent of Catholic respondents were satisfied with the police's performance as a whole, compared with 37 per cent in May 1999. Among Protestants, 83 per cent thought the RUC was doing a good job, 10 per cent up from May last year. In total, 67 per cent of respondents expressed confidence in the RUC as a whole, compared with 58 per cent last year.
According to the survey, satisfaction rates with police performance in the respondents' local areas has also increased. Among Catholics, 47 per cent said their local police were doing a good job, up from 35 per cent; while 71 per cent of Protestants, up 10 per cent, said they were satisfied with their local RUC.
Overall, 61 per cent thought their local police were doing a good job, compared with 49 per cent last May.
On the issue of whether both communities were treated equally by the RUC, the survey found that 45 per cent of Catholics and 78 per cent of Protestants believed that to be the case on a local level. Overall, 31 per cent of Catholics and 75 per cent of Protestants perceived the police's treatment of the two communities as equal.
With regard to public order policing, 17 per cent of Catholics and 62 per cent of Protestants said they had total or a lot of confidence in the RUC. The way police deal with drink driving and speeding, emergency calls, domestic violence and burglaries received high satisfaction ratings overall, while the service's record when dealing with vandalism was perceived as poor by both communities.
The Police Authority yesterday described the survey's results as "encouraging but unsurprising". The authority's chairman, Mr Pat Armstrong, conceded, however, that public surveys of this nature were not entirely reliable.