8/9 May 1999
Address on Justice and Equality section
By Sinn Fein Minister-designate Bairbre de Brún
8 May, 1999
To date the focus of much of the public debate on policing has revolved around what will happen to the RUC. However, it is worthwhile taking some time to look at what kind of police service we want put in its place, and at the ways in which we can ensure that people get the kind of policing they deserve.
Sinn Fein wants to see an all-Ireland police service. We made this clear during the negotiations, which led to the Good Friday Agreement, and we re-iterated this point in our submission to the Patten Commission. Pending the creation of such a service, there are a number of steps, which should be taken to ensure that policing in the transitional period sees a marked improvement on the past.
Sinn Fein believes that a policing service needs to be:
- representative of the community it serves
- accountable to the community and to the law
- routinely unarmed
- fair, efficient and impartial
The police service should also should reflect the identity of the community as a whole. In this respect a force which is openly hostile to an Irish identity, nationalist aspirations or the catholic faith must be a thing of the past.
There would inevitably be a substantial reduction in the personnel levels in any new policing service. At present there are some 13,000 members in the RUC and RUC Reserve. Given the size and population of the six counties, we would expect the new service to consist of around 3,000 members, with no need for a reserve element whatsoever. In terms of proportionally, one could expect about 1500 of these to be women and little less than that number to come from the nationalist community.
We need to send out the clearest signals that we wish to recruit people:
- who are willing to serve the community as a whole, fairly and impartially
- who see themselves as being answerable to all of the community
- who accept human rights and community awareness as underpinning their approach to their everyday work
- who can work in and contribute to a working environment which is free from sexual harassment or racial or sectarian abuse, either of colleagues or of members of the public
Once we know the kind of people we want to attract we need to ensure that we have appropriate training and proper accountability mechanisms and complaints mechanisms as well as ongoing monitoring.
A new civilian oversight body should replace the present Police Authority, to give the clearest possible signal that we have, a new beginning'' as envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement. This should include:
- Irish and British government nominees
- External monitoring representatives from a body such as the European Commission or Council of Europe,
- Legal experts including lawyers, magistrates, and human rights specialists
The issue of policing lies at the heart of the resolution of the conflict in our country. In our submission to the Independent Commission on policing, Sinn Fein identified the many reasons for nationalist rejection of the RUC.
Over the years the RUC have seen themselves and been seen as the armed guardians of the union with Great Britain, rather than as a policing service whose job was to uphold the law impartially. the RUC has always been completely unrepresentative of the community as a whole and both it and the criminal justice system within which it operates, have been found to violate the most basic international human rights standards.
Since the 1970's the RUC has been routinely involved in torture and ill treatment of nationalists which has been internationally condemned by many human rights groups and also by British government inquiries. There is a clear perception that the RUC has been given carte blanche to operate without fear of ever being held accountable for their actions.
While the Patten commission, which was established as a result of the Good Friday Agreement, has met and has heard a wide range of submissions, no recommendations have been made, and the Commission has stressed publicly that no conclusions have been drawn, even privately, at this stage.
The RUC continues to patrol the streets and countryside with some areas being very intensively patrolled, still operates out of heavily fortified installations, travels in armoured vehicles in most areas, and is heavily armed on a routine basis.
Local newspapers in nationalist areas continue to carry stories of complaint against the RUC. These range from attacks on GAA clubs and members, attacks on peaceful demonstrations, heavy-handed house raids, threats against solicitors and intimidation and harassment of young people, to a failure to show respect to members of the nationalist community, and pressure on a wide spectrum of ordinary citizens to become informers. This contrasts with a failure to protect nationalists and isolated catholic family homes and businesses, which have come under attack.
Thus the new beginning to policing'' foreseen in the Good Friday Agreements still a long way off.
It is often said that we must leave the mistakes of the past behind us. The RUC is clearly one of these. Sinn Fein will continue to campaign for the disbandment of the RUC and its replacement with a police service, which has the allegiance, the trust and the confidence of all our people.