At least €197 million will be paid out to Northern Ireland police officers quitting the force under controversial severance arrangements, it was revealed today.
Even though Chief Constable Hugh Orde suspended the scheme for a year in a bid to halt an alarming drain of his resources, the British government has already budgeted for the next round of early retirements.
According to Northern Ireland Office figures just over €117 million was spent on lucrative benefit and retraining packages in the programme's first two years.
Projected figures show another €80 million has been set aside until 2004 to pay for officers of all ranks leaving under proposals in Mr Chris Patten's reform blueprint.
Payments have ranged from €94,000 for constables up to €223,000 given to chief superintendents.
Under the Patten plans for transforming Northern Ireland's overwhelmingly Protestant police service, lucrative retirement packages were offered to serving officers and a new 50:50 religious recruitment policy introduced to increase Catholic numbers.
Full-time operational strength was to be cut from around 9,000 to 7,500 men and women on patrols.
But demand for the severance packages from officers who served at the height of the 30-year conflict has been so strong that Mr Orde was faced with huge manpower problems when he took over from Sir Ronnie Flanagan last September.
Since voluntary retirement was introduced in January 2001 a total of 1,792 officers have quit.
With police service numbers now running at under 6,900 full-time staff, the programme is on hold until next April while new recruits are trained up.
An NIO spokeswoman insisted significant progress has been made in reducing police numbers and tackling religious imbalances by achieving 30 per cent Catholic officers by 2010.
PA