Urgent efforts to increase police patrols in Northern Ireland have been hit by a dismal response from Catholics to a new recruitment drive, Chief Constable Hugh Orde disclosed today.
Amid escalating fears of a Christmas bombing campaign by dissident terrorists, plans to combat the threat have been dealt a major blow by the 50-50 religious employment rules.
Only 10% of successful applications for clerical posts in the latest stage of a civilianisation programme designed to free desk-bound officers were from Catholics.
"The facts are quite stark. We had 26 successful people from the Catholic community and around 250 non-Catholics. That means I can only recruit 52 and it makes it harder. It's going to take a lot longer than I had hoped because of 50-50," Mr Orde said.
As he marked his 100th day in charge of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Mr Orde said some stations might be closed to get more officers on the beat.
"We have got far too many police properties for a population of 1.5 million people," he said. "I have got 190 different locations. We need to ask hard questions around do people want police in stations or do they want them out on patrol?
"There's nothing more emotive than closing police stations, but these are the hard choices we have to make," he added.