SINN FÉIN and the unionist parties have criticised an SDLP call for control of intelligence to be returned to the police from the British intelligence service MI5.
SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie made the call in an Irish Timesarticle published last week and raised her concerns about dissident violence with the Northern Ireland Office yesterday.
Citing the Garda, which has its own intelligence wing, she said it had been effective against dissident republican activity in Border counties.
There are widespread concerns at the extent and spread of dissident attacks in the past two weeks and the levels of intelligence needed to mount them.
However, Sinn Féin has accused the party of advocating a return to the past and of seeking “special branch mark two”.
“The practical outworking of what she is calling for is the embedding of MI5 into the PSNI,” Assembly member Alex Maskey said.
“She is in effect calling for the malign influence of MI5 to be allowed to contaminate the new policing structures of the PSNI. We have of course been down this road before. It is what gave us the special branch as a force within a force, unaccountable and untouchable.”
Mr Maskey claimed the decision to remove MI5 from policing structures and disband special branch was essential to getting the nationalist and republican community to endorse the new policing structures.
“Quite why Margaret Ritchie has become a cheerleader for British spooks and their desire to pollute civic policing here is a matter for her to explain,” he said.
“The PSNI have made clear they have full access to all intelligence. Policing board members, including SDLP members, are routinely briefed on this. Given her comments it seems that Margaret Ritchie hasn’t been briefed by her board colleagues on the detail of any of this.”
Ulster Unionist policing spokesman Basil McCrea and the DUP’s Jimmy Spratt also criticised the SDLP. Mr McCrea said her comments had more to do with “an SDLP, not Northern Ireland, agenda”.
“It is time all those parties who have signed up to the democratic process set aside their petty point scoring and political grandstanding, and co-operated to see off the dissident threat,” he said.
Mr McCrea, who chairs the policing board’s human rights and professional standards committee, added: “The Chief Constable has not had cause to complain about the information being made available by MI5.
“The suggestion that there are intelligence difficulties is more about Margaret Ritchie’s personal, political agenda than about a genuine knowledge of the challenges being faced by the PSNI.”
Jimmy Spratt, a DUP member of the policing board said: “The dissident republican terrorist campaign is designed to overthrow a democratic government and the established will of the people of Northern Ireland. No weapon in the armoury of the state should be off-limits when it comes to combating the threat posed by murderous republican criminals.
“Margaret Ritchie’s comments concerning the capacity of the PSNI are interesting,” he said. “Had it not been for years of successive moaning and complaining from the SDLP and others, the capacity of the police to gather information through the excellent work of the special branch would not have been curtailed.”