Mike Nesbitt, the Ulster Unionist Party’s spokesperson on the Policing Board, has urged the Justice Minister to bid for some of the £150M of available funding identified by the Finance Minister and allocate it to the PSNI.

Speaking after figures were released in a Written Ministerial Statement to the Assembly from the Finance Minister Conor Murphy, Mike Nesbitt said:

“The Finance Minister has said that he has £50.2M Resource DEL funding eligible to carry forward and £100M Barnett Consequential.

“Given the pressures which the PSNI Budget is under, I would strongly urge the DoJ to bid for this money to help mitigate the drop in police numbers that we have been warned about, and which will inevitably mean that the quality of policing service becomes unnecessarily challenging.

“The PSNI has already identified a £226 million hole in its budget over the next three years, and they have also identified pressures of £59m next year. It is therefore very clear that this money – and certainly a portion of it - could be very well used by the PSNI.”