Old controversies linger, but the real challenge will be winning cross- community support for the PSNI, writes Dan Keenan Northern News Editor
When Hugh Orde first pulls the chair up to the chief constable's desk at police headquarters and flips through the sheaf of congratulatory notes, he may well cast a rueful eye over the pending tray. Many of the challenges he now faces are stacked up there. Some relate to the ongoing establishment of the PSNI, but many more are rooted in the old RUC days and not even Sir Ronnie Flanagan could dispel them.
One board member noted recently: "Ronnie was a cop's cop, what we need now is a people's cop." There is little doubt that while praise is due for Sir Ronnie's record as foundation-layer for the new police service, he has left the site far from clear for his successor.
The former chief, in the words of another member of the Policing Board, "gave us Patten". It's an achievement which unites all aspects of opinion on the board, and one which no one is prepared to underestimate. Sir Ronnie's belief and determination eased the transition from the RUC to the PSNI and softened the blows of the loss of identity, crest and uniform.
With problems piling high in the new chief's pending tray at police headquarters, and the momentous task of transforming the promise of new policing into actual delivery is truly Himalayan.
Sir Ronnie enjoyed high public visibility and this no doubt helped facilitate the launch of the PSNI. But he has been unable to clear the air of controversy surrounding alleged loyalist collusion, the Omagh bombing inquiry, Castlereagh and the role of rogue loyalists and republican dissidents. His inability to tame these tigers clouded his departure in March.
But the biggest task facing the new chief may well be associated with the fostering of the fledgling PSNI. To establish it as credible and deserving of cross-community support will be a huge undertaking.
To that end, the process envisaged by Patten must be concluded by the new man. That means the tricky job of amalgamating Special Branch, the intelligence operation, into CID or crime division. This goes against the grain, given the pivotal importance of intelligence. But the controversies surrounding the use of RUC agents and the furore over the use of intelligence arising out of the Ombudsman's report on the Omagh investigation, have added a hard edge to this the trickiest of problems.
Add to that questions now hanging over the entire intelligence network following the Castlereagh break-in and the theft of sensitive material, and the new chief will have to act decisively. No one area will have such a bearing on nationalist opinion as this.
For Ronnie Flanagan, Omagh was the problem which would not go away. He is known to have been incensed by Mrs O'Loan's report on the bombing investigation and drafted in several senior officers to work over Christmas and New Year to work on the official police response.
When the controversy came to a head in January, the Policing Board stepped in and drew up a compromise which allowed the chief to keep his man in charge of the case while appointing a senior outside officer to advise on the conduct of the investigation.
This genuflection in the direction of Mrs O'Loan's six recommendations concerning the affair seemed to have drawn a line under the dispute. All that changed with the swearing of affidavits by Mr McQuillan and Mr Sam Kinkaid which ran counter to the official police line. The police are now divided among themselves about who ran the Omagh case.
The investigation does not have the total confidence of the Omagh families. The conflict with the Ombudsman needs to be settled and convictions are required.
Since the ceasefires on 1994, the IRA has gone back to violence once and the UDA cessation has been called bogus by the northern secretary. With rumours building that the UVF could be rearming, Johnny Adair now released from jail and sporadic incidents allegedly involving the Provisionals, the incoming chief will have his hands full keeping the lid on the paramilitaries.
The summer marching season is never a good time to build on the relative calm which was engineered after the violence last January at Holy Cross school and throughout north Belfast.
While politicians lead the political charge to settle the North's most troublesome flashpoints, they need the space to let politics breathe.
It will fall to the new man to provide that space.