Policing Board Member, Alan Chambers MLA, said, “There’s no doubt that the PSNI will welcome any amount of additional budget made available. Over recent months, the Chief Constable has used every opportunity to identify the serious financial situation that the organisation he leads has found itself in. He has spelt out in stark terms the adverse effect that reality is having on his ability to provide the level of policing that the public of Northern Ireland both expect and deserve. He has attracted the wrath of senior civil servants by stepping outside the normal practice of lobbying by going directly to the Prime Minister in London, appealing for more funding for his ailing organisation.

“The number of officers recommended in the Patton Report on the New Beginning of Policing in Northern Ireland has been demonstrated to be little more than shallow promises. Patton recommended a police service made up of 7500 full-time officers, supported by a locally recruited reserve complement of some 2500 officers. We are still not even within hailing distance of the numbers of full-time officers recommended by Patton, and the 2500 reserve officers are never even mentioned. Patton's report emerged as a result of the Good Friday Agreement that successive governments in London and indeed from across the world have lauded.

“Some backs must be raw from the collective back slapping over the years regarding this piece of diplomacy and goodwill, while the true authors were rewarded by being sidelined by others who shamelessly claimed the kudos and who then distorted the outworking of the agreement by their flawed, self-serving and misguided St Andrew’s amendments, made without any public consultation or mandate. While all this enthusiasm for the changes in policing was peaking, no effort was made to properly fund the new emerging police service, and this wilful neglect has been building up to the current unacceptable budgetary stress being experienced by the PSNI.

“During the recent street disorder, an exhausted PSNI had to request outside assistance from Police Scotland to help out their stressed-out officers on the front line, with numbers depleted by riot-inflicted injuries. A significant paragraph, but never reported in my experience, in the Patton report states:

"The Northern Ireland police should have the capacity within its own establishment to deal with public order emergencies without help from other police services."

“Twenty-five years on and that definitive aspiration of Patton has not been met, not by any failure of the PSNI but because of years of political under-funding.

“The £5m found by the Finance Minister to meet the costs of bringing in outside assistance during the recent disorder is a mere sticking plaster solution to a far greater crisis in policing.

“The Minister has now pulled out £200m from his supposedly empty coffers, and this has been lauded as a silver bullet by the First Minister. The Justice Minister says £7m this year will kick start the recruitment process to eventually get to 7500 officers, with the rest of the £200m deployed over future years. This sudden windfall begs a few questions. If the Justice Minister is correct and an amount of £7m would have allowed the PSNI to progress their recruitment drive, why was this figure not quoted before, and why was no paper presented to the Executive making the case for this more modest figure in earlier discussions? The Finance Minister is reported as having signed off the PSNI business case for funding of £200m. What does that action actually mean, and has the Minister provided a paper to date to the Executive asking for approval?

“The Minister for Justice confirmed during Question Time in the Assembly on Tuesday that no discussion has taken place to date within the Executive in relation to any of the budget figures being reported.

“The Ulster Unionist Party will support any reasonable request for additional funding for the PSNI that will enable the Chief Constable and his management team to concentrate on policing matters rather than being sidetracked by financial matters.”