THE chairman of the Police Authority for Northern Ireland, Mr David Cook, said yesterday he was confident the British government would accept that his organisation should retain responsibility for the RUC budget.
If this was not confirmed in the forthcoming British White Paper on policing, the authority would continue to advance its arguments, Mr Cook said.
Last night, the Northern Ireland Office said the details of the expected White Paper on the future of policing in the North had not yet been finalised. A spokesman insisted discussions were continuing, following a Daily Telegraph report yesterday that new lines of police accountability would enshrine in law the obligation of serving officers to act in "due deference to the two traditions in Northern Ireland and on behalf of the whole community".
The report said the paper expected later this month, several weeks behind schedule could involve a significant cut in RUC force levels a decentralised structure by axing the divisional command tier; a network of 24 locally autonomous police areas; and greater use of the RUC Reserve in community policing.
While ministers and senior officers are believed to be adamantly opposed to separate policing by Protestants and Catholics of their respective areas, they reportedly, see scope for recruiting reserves from "hardline areas".
Mr Cook, responding to the suggestions in the Daily Telegraph that the White Paper was expected to propose the transfer of financial and administrative responsibility from the Police Authority to the RUC Chief Constable, said this was one of the central matters relating to accountability. The question of who ran the police budget was an important part of the issue of the accountability of the Chief Constable and the police service to the authority and to the community.
They could think of no good reason for changing the arrangements originally introduced by the Stormont parliament in 1970, and which indeed have been confirmed in the recent legislation in England and Wales".
He added: "We do not agree that the budget should be transferred in advance of making sure that the improvement and streamlining of the accountability mechanisms - which we believe to be central to policing reform - have been brought into play and are seen to be working properly."
Mr Cook said that the question of changing the name of the RUC, as well as many other policing issues, was among many matters being considered by the authority. Hundreds of suggestions had been raised in nearly 8,000 submissions, received by the authority during its public consultation process on policing over the past year, and it was preparing a report.
The former chairman of the SDLP, Mr Mark Durkan, said the debate on policing had to take place in parallel with the debate on political development.
The debate did not have to be confined to traditional models of policing - there were other types and formats for policing involving and allowing a much greater interagency approach.
The DUP secretary, Mr Nigel Dodds, in a statement, urged the British government to proceed with the utmost caution on reforms of the RUC in the light of "the escalating return to terrorism by the IRA..."
He said: "Reports of a White Paper which will drastically cut the number of RUC officers and impose other restrictions on the RUC will be viewed with alarm by the decent law abiding people of Northern Ireland ... Any attempt to change the name of the RUC or to abolish the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen as a sop to republican demands will be fiercely resisted by unionists.
"It would be particularly reprehensible if measures were proposed and were seen to be a reaction to Sinn Fein/IRA propaganda that drug related killings were happening because of a deficiency of policing in Northern Ireland."