'No confidence' without reserve

The full time reserve is to be phased out in 2011

A senior DUP member has insisted that retaining the full time police reserve is essential to devolving policing.

On Wednesday, DUP leader Peter Robinson signalled that keeping the officers was not a pre-condition, but that community confidence was.

Earlier, Jeffrey Donaldson said he did not think the party would back the transfer of power without the reserve.

But, the Lagan Valley MP said there was "no contradiction" and that losing the reserve would hit public confidence.

"I would not have the confidence that there would be sufficient resource within the PSNI to deal with the terrorist threat," he said.

Dissident

He said the loss of experienced reservists in the police district covering from Lurgan to the border where there was dissident republican activity was not acceptable.

"If the chief constables proposals go ahead we will lose 100 full-time reservists from that area - they will be replaced by 10 regular officers, that's a net loss of 90 officers.

"Now this is in a area where tragically police constable Stephen Carroll was murdered, an area where a seven-man IRA dissident gang was out doing check-points in south Armagh."

Phasing out of the police reserve - an auxiliary group of officers who support the regular force in mainly security-related work - was one of the recommendations of the Patten report.

Last week, new Chief Constable Matt Baggott said there was no operational need for the reserve and that plans to wind it up in 2011 would proceed.

He said that significant number of officers needed to be released from "non-police duties" to enhance "front-line visibility".

Mr Baggott briefed Northern Ireland's Policing Board on Thursday of his plans for building community confidence in the police.

"Those officers who want to remain as police officers should be allowed to remain as police officers," Mr Donaldson added.

'Disarray'

In a statement issued on Thursday, Mr Robinson again stated the importance of "gaining community confidence" and the issues involved.

"These ingredients included agreeing a satisfactory financial package, resolving parading issues, retaining the valuable resource provided by the full-time reserve, ending the policy of refusing to renew PPWs (personal protection weapons) to former members of the security forces and providing a recognition of the service of part-time reserve officers," he said.

He added that confidence "will not be built if the public believe there is a reduction in the ability of the PSNI to do the job".

SDLP leader Mark Durkan said that the DUP had either to accept the operational independence of the chief constable or not.

"I think that it shows the DUP are in disarray and Peter Robinson is in a complete dither on this issue and that is not good," he said.

He said the party had used community confidence as the "catch-all heading for a whole shopping list of issues".