DUP leader asks: Where was Sinn Fein support for police when dissidents were demanding them out of schools?

Gavin Robinson was speaking as Sinn Fein re-stated its belief in a return to 50/50 recruitment to the PSNI after figures released during the week showed declining numbers of Catholic job applicants.

On Wednesday, the PSNI revealed that 26.7% of job applicants to its 2026 recruitment drive were Catholic, compared with 28.8% a year earlier.

This sparked a wave of debate about why the numbers are relatively low.

Ex-Sinn Fein MLA Mairtin O Muilleoir said “the main block has been the PSNI insisting they want to defend the heritage they have inherited from the old RUC”, and pointed to a lack of Irish being spoken by PSNI officers, whilst Sinn Fein Policing Board member Linda Dillon said the force’s handling of legacy presents a “barrier” to recruits.

Mr Robinson has now said that for some people with nationalist backgrounds “choosing to join the PSNI can still carry personal risk, intimidation and community hostility”, adding: “Those ‘chill factors’ exist – pretending otherwise helps no one.”

He said: "For too long, there has been an absence of sustained and wholehearted leadership within republicanism to challenge those barriers directly.

"It was an appalling abdication of leadership that it was 20 years after the PSNI was formed before Sinn Fein’s leadership attended a passing-out parade or a recruitment event.”

He pointed to a recent campaign by dissident republican collective Lasair Dhearg, where the group tried to “bully” the PSNI out of a jobs fair being held in All Saints College Belfast in west Belfast this month.

The group claimed the PSNI ended up pulling out (and made a similar claim about another school jobs fair in north Belfast in January).

This, said Mr Robinson, was met with “silence from the republican leadership”.

"It should have been an easy decision for Sinn Fein to stand alongside the PSNI recruitment table at the event,” he said.

"Instead of stepping up at events such as that in west Belfast, republicans’ response to the latest recruitment figures has included predictable calls for 50/50 recruitment.

"That would be a mistake. It would reintroduce discrimination, and undermine merit.”

Sinn Fein was asked to comment, but had not done so at time of writing.

TUV general secretary Ann McClure said: “The idea that we should be setting a quota for Roman Catholics or for that matter any religious group in the PSNI is regressive.

“TUV is firmly of the view that the best qualified person should be who gets the job.

“Frankly, the concern which I most often hear articulated about the PSNI is the speed of responses to crime and the lack of viable policing on our streets.

“No one asks an officer about his or her religion when they turn up in response to a 999 call.

“The obsession with this issue by some elements of the media is not shared by the public generally who just want people who can do the job.”

One lesser-noted facet of this week’s data on new applicants to join the PSNI is that a disproportionate proportion of "LGBT+” people had applied.

In the 2026 recruitment drive, some 7.3% of applicants are listed as LGBT+ (and in 2025 the figure was 8%).

The 2021 census recorded that 2.1% of the general population were “LGB+” (it did not measure the incidence of transgenderism).

The PSNI has said: “The PSNI is committed to being representative of the communities we serve and significant progress has been made over the past 25 years in relation to those appointed within the service…

"We acknowledge that there are challenges when recruiting from those backgrounds that are underrepresented, but this is something we’re determined to address and we put significant effort into our outreach and engagement activity.”

It said any return to 50/50 is “a legislative matter and it would not be for the PSNI to comment on”.