As he steps down as Chief Constable this Sunday after 32 years in the
police, Sir Ronnie Flanagan sees a number of challenges lying ahead for policing in Northern Ireland.
He believes the first will be to ensure that the new trainees - who graduate on April 5 - will be fully integrated into the service.
As someone who joined the RUC on the back of the 1969 Hunt Report which sought to create an unarmed police force, the outgoing Chief Constable believes this is crucial.
"I was part of the new batch of recruits recruited immediately after the Hunt Report and honestly we were very well accepted," he recalls.
"There might have been a bit of banter. The height limit had changed - generally we were smaller than the others and silly things like that - but genuinely we were very well accepted.
"This organisation has been at great pains to ensure that there is no sense of ‘us and them', that there is no sense of `the old and the new', that everyone feels an absolutely integral part of the organisation and all colleagues work together, so that's one challenge - to make sure there is complete integration," he said.
The other challenge, he believes, is for society at large.
"It's now really time for everyone to work in partnership. It is now really time for everyone to accept their responsibility in policing.
"All communities have to play their part, have to accept their responsibility and I refer in that instance to all political parties because nobody should be in any doubt if any one group or any one political party withholds support then the overall effectiveness of policing is debilitated to some extent."
PA