British army explosives teams in Northern Ireland dealt with more than 750 dissident republican bomb alerts in the past two years, a police officers’ body said today.
In at least 420 of those incidents a viable device with the potential to kill or injure was discovered, chairman of the Police Federation Terry Spence added.
The head of the officers’ representative body outlined the severity of the current threat posed by the dissidents as he warned Government funding cuts were undermining the ability of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to tackle paramilitaries.
The PSNI saw its annual £1.2 billion budget cut by ££71 million last year and another £74 million will be shorn off in the coming two years. The Treasury has also asked the police to identify a further £17 million worth of efficiency savings in the current financial year.
“In the determination to close the book on Northern Ireland as a political and security nightmare the PSNI has been dangerously under-resourced,” he told delegates at the federation’s annual conference in Belfast. “Despite the deteriorating security situation we still have not faced up to the severity of the threat from dissidents.”
New PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott and Security Minister Paul Goggins were among guests invited to the La Mon House hotel.
While dissident republicans remain small in number and with negligible community support, their murder of three security force members in March showed they had the capacity and will to wreak mayhem and destruction.
The discovery of a 600lb bomb on the south Armagh border earlier this month, which came weeks after masked men set up an armed road block in the nearby village of Meigh, has again brought into sharp focus the intent of the dissidents to drag Northern Ireland back to its dark past.
“Ordinary decent people struggle to comprehend the mentality of these murderous dinosaurs,” Mr Spence added. “But what we do readily understand, and what we cannot mistake, is their utter determination to kill soldiers and police officers, or anyone associated with them in any way.”