Republican bomb alerts in Northern Ireland total 750 in two years
Henry McDonald, Guardian
Budget cuts could undermine ability to tackle dissident threat, warns Police Federation for Northern Ireland
Army bomb disposal officers have dismantled or been called out to 750 dissident republican bomb alerts over the past two years, police said today.
The Police Federation for Northern Ireland said the figures underlined the severity of the threat to Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers as most of the bomb plots were devised to kill or injure them. Some 420 of these incidents involved the discovery of a viable device which would maim, it said.
Terry Spence, the federation’s chairman, said government cuts in policing were undermining the PSNI’s ability to tackle the dissident republican threat.
The PSNI saw its annual £1.2bn budget cut by £71m last year and another £74m will be lost in the coming two years. The Treasury has also asked the police to identify a further £17m of efficiency savings in the current financial year.
The Northern Ireland first minister, Peter Robinson, and his deputy, Martin McGuinness, met Gordon Brown in Downing Street this week to request more money for policing.
Speaking to delegates at the federation’s annual conference in Belfast today about the threat from groups such as the Real IRA and Continuity IRA, Spence said: “In the determination to close the book on Northern Ireland as a political and security nightmare the PSNI has been dangerously under-resourced. Despite the deteriorating security situation we still have not faced up to the severity of the threat from dissidents.”
The new PSNI chief constable, Matt Baggott, and the security minister, Paul Goggins, were among guests invited to the La Mon House outside Belfast for a meeting with the federation, which represents rank and file officers in the province.
This week Baggott took up his role as head of the PSNI and admitted that the renewed dissident violence aimed at destabilising Northern Ireland was “real” and “a top priority”. He refused to rule out the continued and controversial use of undercover army units working alongside the PSNI to spy on dissident republican suspects.
