THE UK Unionist MP, Mr Bob McCartney, is urging Queen's Student Union to take immediate action to redress a religious imbalance among its part time staff who are locally recruited.
It was "breathtaking" that 84 per cent of these employees were Catholic and only 16 per cent, Protestant, he said.
In a letter to the Belfast university's student union president, Ms Michelle McCauley, he wrote: "This imbalance must have been screamingly obvious to any student office bearer over the last decade and yet it has, apparently, gone unremarked and unimpeded.
"I would be interested to hear at what point your union became aware of the make up of its part time staff and what measures have been undertaken since then to deal with the question.
"Have you sought assistance from the National Union of Students or Union of Students in Ireland on the matter, or any other, agency, and have you made the figures known to your members?
"It must surely be plain that there is a colossal `chill' factor at work in your union, and consequently within the university, itself, which militates against students from a Protestant background applying to Queen's."
Mr McCartney said that the situation was compounded by the union's bilingual policy. The union's deputy president, Mr Nigel O'Connor, acknowledged that Protestants were under represented in its workforce.
He said that the problem started being seriously addressed four years ago. "The union committed to the promotion a neutral working environment and recognised such under representation to be problematic.
Mr O'Connor said that the union was not complacent about its employment practices and was implementing fair employment codes of affirmative action in order to rectify the religious imbalance.
"However, it could be argued that the efforts of some within the unionist community to create a `chill factor' around the union, labelling it incorrectly as a `republican stronghold' have contributed to the problem," he said.