The DUP and Ulster Unionist Party have blocked an attempt by the SDLP to have the Police Ombudsman's findings that elements in the RUC Special Branch colluded with UVF killers in north Belfast debated at the last pre-election meetings of the transitional Assembly next week.
UUP leader Sir Reg Empey said such a debate would have led to pre-Assembly election "grandstanding" and certain members using parliamentary privilege to unfairly name people in connection with Nuala O'Loan's report.
Sinn Féin and the SDLP accused both the UUP and DUP of stifling and being afraid to enter into proper debate on a hugely important issue.
The UUP, however, moved significantly from its initial position on the report as enunciated by former party security spokesman Lord (Ken) Maginnis who said Mrs O'Loan's findings were "rubbish". The policing board was briefed in private yesterday by Mrs O'Loan about her allegations that UVF members in north Belfast, and in particular its Mount Vernon leader Mark Haddock, murdered up to 15 people with the knowledge of members of special branch.
After the meeting UUP and Assembly member Fred Cobain said that based on the scale and depth of the investigation he believed her report was accurate. "When you read through the report it is very difficult not to take that report as credible," he said.
DUP board member Ian Paisley junior was somewhat more considered in his view of the report after hearing Mrs O'Loan. He said: "if there are problems let's put them right", although he held to his view that the information in the report was "perhaps not as credible as some people have been led to believe".
SDLP board member Alex Attwood said the board and the chief constable, Sir Hugh Orde, who also addressed the board in private yesterday, had accepted that Mrs O'Loan's recommendations should be implemented.
Meanwhile, former Labour leader Ruairí Quinn has asked the Government and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell to explain why former RUC chief constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, was involved in the selection process that last year appointed Kathleen O'Toole as chief inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate - particularly when many of the allegations against special branch happened when Sir Ronnie was RUC chief constable.
