Departing Oversight Commissioner Al Hutchinson has revealed his dismay at the continued delay in building Northern Ireland's new police training college.
With the British Treasury still to rubber-stamp Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Hain`s plan to fund construction, Mr Hutchinson urged the Policing Board to keep pressuring the authorities on the £130 million state-of-the-art academy.
The former Royal Canadian Mounted Police chief, whose role ends this month, praised the transformation within the force since he came to Northern Ireland six years ago to monitor the overhaul.
He spoke of improved political leadership, and predicted Sinn Fein`s decision to embrace the justice arrangements would only further strengthen the reforms mapped out by Chris Patten`s commission to make Northern Ireland`s Police Service acceptable to all sides.
But the lingering uncertainty over when the facilities to train new recruits will be erected at the site in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, was not ignored.
Mr Hutchinson said: "In 1999 the commission recommended this. In 2001 the Government agreed to it. "And it`s going to be a decade before this college is built. The facts speak for themselves, and it`s disappointing."
Both Mr Hutchinson and his predecessor Tom Constantine, whom he worked alongside after the Oversight Commissioner`s Office was set up in Belfast, viewed a new academy to replace the city`s Garnerville facilities as one of the most important of the 175 Patten recommendations.
Uncertainties over a £40 million funding shortfall plagued the project until earlier this year when Mr Hain announced the cash would be provided for a joint college to train police and prison officers alongside firefighters.