1,000 RUC Officers Hired By PSNI

A report has revealed over 1,000 former RUC officers have been hired within the PSNI.

One in five RUC officers who initially retired under the Patten reforms of policing were then rehired by Northern Ireland’s new police force, according to the Audit Office.

Under the Patten reforms, the RUC was replaced by the PSNI in 2001, as a drive to attract more Roman Catholics to the organisation post-Troubles.

The move was intended to help make the police force in Northern Ireland a more equal representation of society. Catholics now make up about 30% of the PSNI.

When the RUC was renamed, many officers retired under a redundancy scheme, but the Audit Office has said almost 20% eventually returned.

The Office even admitted that, at one point, the process was "out of control."

The PSNI has argued it requires the skills and experience of former 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.

256 retired officers were rehired with three months of leaving, according to the statistics. Of those, 127 were rehired within a month, 54 within a week, and 21 were back within a day. Two were employed as agency staff before they had officially left the PSNI.

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.

(IT/GK)