The Five Demands

One in five RUC officers rehired by PSNI, says report (BBC News Northern Ireland)

More than 1,000 former RUC officers who took redundancy were later rehired on temporary contracts by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The officers had retired under the most generous redundancy scheme in the world. It was part of the Patten reforms of policing.

The Audit Office said that almost 20% of those officers had returned.

The spending watchdog said that, at one point, the process was “out of control”.

About 5,500 RUC officers were paid off under the Patten redundancy scheme; 1,071 of them were later rehired as temporary agency staff, the Audit Office revealed.

Under the Patten policing reforms, the RUC was replaced in 2001 by the PSNI as part of measures to attract more Catholic recruits and make the police more representative of Northern Ireland’s population.

Catholics now make up about 30% of PSNI officers.

The report said the practice of rehiring reached its height in 2007 when more than 800 agency staff were employed, the majority of them former police officers.

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Analysis

Vincent Kearney
BBC NI home affairs correspondent
About 5,500 officers took advantage of what was the most generous redundancy scheme anywhere in the world. The total cost was around £500m.

The report reveals that 256 retired officers were rehired with three months of leaving. Of those, 127 were rehired within a month, 54 within a week, and 21 were back within a day.

Two were even employed as agency staff before they had officially left the PSNI.

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It said the way the PSNI had recruited temporary staff had not always met with the high standards of governance and accountability expected of public bodies.

It also revealed that 64 agency staff are paid through limited companies, which can be a means of reducing the amount they pay in tax.

The report also revealed that in 2004, a £44m contract to employ temporary staff was awarded to a local company with no competitive tendering process.

Sinn Fein’s policing spokesman Gerry Kelly said it was “clearly an old boys’ club”.

“This is d-day for the chief constable.

“I certainly hope he is not going to come out and try to defend this, especially when these facts are uncontested. What we need to know is what is going to be done to rectify what I would describe as corrupt practices.”