Published: Thursday, 6th August, 2009 9:00am

Protestants don't apply for College senior posts

by Editorial Department

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Tom Elliott.

It has come to the point where Protestants consider it a waste of time applying for internal management post at the South West College, according to Ulster Unionist Assembly member, Tom Elliott.

Mr. Elliott says that official figures show that Protestants got very few of the internal posts in the new amalgamated College, and one employee has told him he felt "almost intimidated" working there now.

The MLA has written to the Department of Employment and Learning Minister, Sir Reg Empey asking for a review of appointment procedures.

A Freedom of Information request by Mr. Elliott showed that following amalgamation, the College management team is 87 per cent Catholic and 13 per cent Protestant. Deputy heads of department are 75 per cent Catholic to 25 Protestant, and of the 47 staff at management level the breakdown is 74.5 per cent Catholic and 25.5 per cent Protestant.

In his letter to the Minister, Mr. Elliott says: "Statistics revealed show that overall Protestants make up 32 per cent of the total workforce employed by the College. However, this percentage does not continue to the higher positions within management. Indeed, it is most worrying to note that only two out of 15 members of the College management team, approximately 13 per cent, come from the Protestant community," said Mr. Elliott.

Asking the Minister to undertake a review of appointment procedures, Mr. Elliott went on: "While the figures for appointments of people from a Protestant background are healthy at the lower levels of employment within the College, it is vital that the lack of Protestant appointments to senior positions is addressed with haste."

Mr. Elliott explained this week that he had received two complaints from members of staff some time ago about appointments made at senior level in the College and had taken this up with the Department. However, at the time the Department took no further action because only a couple of appointments had been made externally.

But more recently, Mr Elliott received further complaints about internal appointments, and the MLA says that figures he received from the College appear to bear this out.

He is particularly concerned that due to re-structuring, when Fermanagh College was amalgamated with Omagh and Cookstown, the whole phase of internal re-appointments into the new South West College shows a perception of religious bias.

In July, Minister Sir Reg Empey wrote to Mr. Elliott saying that "South West College is undertaking an independent review of the recruitment and selection procedures that were applied in all recent appointments to the College."

In its response to Mr. Elliott, the new College gave him figures for appointments, as well as making a number of observations.

They pointed out that following the amalgamation, they inherited the workforce from the three colleges and sought to preserve employment and achieve change by using internal trawl processes -- without recourse to compulsory redundancies.

The College response said: "While the inherited position from the predecessor bodies is that Protestant representation in the College is less than for Catholics, this is not a factor that the College has been able to significantly influence during a period of restructuring."

In a letter to Mr. Elliott last week, the chairman of the SW College Board, Mr Joseph Martin points out that he is satisfied that the recruitment and selection procedures put in place by the new College are "rigorous and fair".

However, Mr. Martin also informed Mr. Elliott that a meeting will take place in the near future with the Equality Commission to review further the restructuring process.