THE BRITISH and Irish governments and the PSNI and Garda will work to “smoke” out dissident republicans and prevent them destabilising the political process, Northern Secretary Owen Paterson has asserted.
Mr Paterson, speaking at the launch last night of Policing the Narrow Ground, which reflects on the 1999 Patten report that reformed policing in Northern Ireland, spoke of the joint governmental and policing commitment to tackle the dissident republican threat. “Working together we will smoke them out and ensure that they do not achieve their aims,” he said at the launch in the British-Irish Secretariat offices in Belfast.
He said there was “unprecedented co-operation” between the two governments, between the two police forces and between the two justice departments in terms of combating dissidents.
“We are absolutely determined that this tiny number of people, who do not have a single political representative North or South of the Border, do not achieve their aims,” added Mr Paterson.
While Northern Ireland faces major spending cuts when the British chancellor George Osborne’s spending review is announced next week Mr Paterson said the British government would “stand by Northern Ireland”.
“We will do the right thing whatever the difficult economic circumstances we have inherited. We will see it through. It is for the good of everyone in Northern Ireland and everyone on the whole island of Ireland.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin described Policing the Narrow Ground as an important book that offered lessons about the transformation of policing in Northern Ireland. Edited by John Doyle it was commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Northern Ireland Office and published by the Royal Irish Academy.
It features articles by the likes of Chris Patten, who chaired the Patten Commission and also by commissioners such as Dr Maurice Hayes, Kathleen O’Toole, Peter Smith, Clifford Shearing and Gerald Lynch. Other contributors include former PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde, former police ombudsman Dame Nuala O’Loan and current and former senior members of the Policing Board, Sir Desmond Rea, Denis Bradley and Barry Gilligan. Mr Martin expressed his gratitude to the commissioners whose work “gave both the police service and the community the tools they needed to put down one of the foundations of lasting peace – a police service that could attract support from all of society”.