The new chief constable makes no bones about the state of the police service he inherits and its failings, writes Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor
If it was contrast the Policing Board was seeking when it appointed Sir Ronnie Flanagan's successor, it found an abundant supply in Mr Hugh Orde. In terms of personality, style and presentation, there is a gulf between the former chief constable of the PSNI and the man who takes over today.
While Sir Ronnie was a silken media performer, who spun the right words with conversational ease, Mr Orde comes more from the feet-up-on-the-desk school of telling it like it is.
At 43 he's relatively young for the job and unionists have already claimed he is not up to it. It's a dismissed claim over which he "didn't even reach a degree of irritation. So what?"
He says those things he's expected to about his taking up of perhaps the world's toughest policing job. "I think I can make a difference here" and "I want to make it the best police force in the world". He is short on such lines but both long and detailed on the things that chief constables tend not to talk about.
"I'm not a serial applicant (for promotion)," he says, adding: "I didn't just want the rank." He makes no bones about the state of the police service he inherits and its failings. Nor does he attempt to play down the scale of the difficulties ranged against him.
In fact he is blunt - almost to the point of using un-Flanagan language which could offend RUC old-timers and unionist stalwarts beyond the walls of police headquarters.
All senior officers have heretofore genuflected at the toll of RUC dead over the long years of conflict. Some have even suggested that to criticise the police is in a form of sacrilege given that so many died at the hands of the ruthless and unseen enemy.
Mr Orde seems to wave that away and looks to the day when perhaps Sinn Féiners take their place on the Policing Board and on the soon-to-be established District Policing Partnerships and when justice powers are devolved to Stormont.
"One need not underestimate the feeling that some officers will have around seeing some people in positions of responsibility bearing in mind their history," he says with uncharacteristic understatement.
But that's for the future. Today, as he ponders the awesome array of problems, Mr Orde emphasises that, first, the fledgling force needs to be put into shape.
"It's about being organised in the best possible way to deliver the service externally," he says. Hinting at a tendency for navel-gazing, he asks: "Are we looking outside or are we looking inside?"
He answers his rhetorical question with the warning; "If you start looking inside then you're dead, because you do what you want to do because it suits us rather than suits the communities."
The route to organised efficiency lies in empowerment - giving influence and responsibility to superintendent ranks at district level and letting them "get on with it because I can't do it from up here. I'll hold them to account for their delivery. We need to have a clear performance culture. So," he says, "the big question is: 'Is our structure right?' And, no, I don't think so"
There is also what he calls "all the people looking into us".
"There's Stevens (the inquiry he joined into alleged RUC-loyalist collusion); the Oversight Commissioner; there's some major crime advisers; there's Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary about to look at us in relation to Special Branch and into how we manage crime. We'll have eight, nine, 10 groups of people looking, pulling us apart, while we are trying to get ourselves organised."
His immediate task is to "get on to the front foot" (a favourite phrase of his, though not used as often as "clarity") and stay one step ahead by concentrating on delivery of sound policing.
Allied to this is the need to push ahead and reform - and to take officers suffering from low morale and poor attendance rates with him. "You've got to get people to realise that you're here for one reason and one reason only, which is to protect the community we serve.
"You need to take your people with you, which means all my cops actually need to be 'people cops' in terms of recognising what we're here for."
Mr Orde spells it out when it comes to the array of difficulties facing the PSNI.
He admits the murder clear-up rate "is crap" and that communities have a faith problem with the police. "If communities don't trust us they won't tell us who's doing them (the murders)."
He refused to shy away from the Omagh controversy, that dark cloud Sir Ronnie could not quite dispel.
"The first investigation certainly could have been better," he says, and insists that there is a "top team that is a team, and actually works together". He wants "absolute clarity".
Nor does he shirk the impact the Stevens report - which he helped author - will have when it is concluded later this autumn. "The report will pull no punches and it's a big leap to say that it will put collusion to bed once and for all. Evidentially I'm confident a number of files will be going to the DPP."
But he warns: "The chief constable will not have a happy read. This is not good news. But it's history." He added: "I don't want to be told I was crap in 1989 (when Pat Finucane was murdered) - the PSNI doesn't need it - but that's its own damn fault for getting into that mess in the first place."
The Castlereagh intelligence robbery in March was "a disaste".
"I suspect it is extremely damaging, but until those who got the intelligence decide to use it, we won't know how dangerous (it is)".
As to what should be done with Special Branch, the police intelligence unit, Mr Orde prefers the current system which sees the police collect and supposedly share information with Crime Branch.
Speculation continues that Military Intelligence could be given the job. "What's important, having gathered the intelligence, is what you do with it," he says. "And that's my business. If we have intelligence in the system and it's in relation to a murder, there's no excuse whatsoever for the senior investigating officer to be denied access to that intelligence at all."
Heading a force which is perhaps the newest, most observed and scrutinised in the world, Mr Orde also has to form working links with the Garda and with Ms Nuala O'Loan, the policing ombudsman.
Of her office, he says: "The reason I'm a supporter of it is if I've got cops who are misbehaving and letting this service down, and letting their colleagues down, then I want them out. I'm sure they're (the ombudsman's team) are effective in doing that."
And the relationship with the Garda? "I've already met Pat (Byrne). That phone on my desk goes straight to his office and I can pick it up whenever I want - and I do."
He added: "I said when I got the job that I saw the role with the Policing Board and the ombudsman as the key to success - and I do and I don't have any difficulty with it."