Half of violent republicans will be released by 2016

He warned the Stormont Justice Committee that more than half of the dissident republican prisoners currently held in Maghaberry are due to be released within the next two years. And that’s against a decreasing police budget.

“A lot of the people who are in prison now have crossed that Rubicon,” he told the Committee. “They have made decisions about how they will conduct their life and about their willingness to use violence for their ends.”

He added: “The concern that we have with a release between now and 2016 of over 50 per cent of the violent dissident republican population from Maghaberry prison is that we need to be in a position where we understand their intent and that we have to have the capability to counter that threat.”

The Chief Constable made the comments in the context of shrinking budgets across the board.

He said 27 per cent of his budget - around £200m - is spent on addressing security-related matters.

“All of that is happening with an ever-decreasing funding envelope, because no part of the police grant and no part of our current functions will be immune from some sort of pressure on the budget. I do not like to say that.

“I would not like people who have violent intent to think that the pressure will be taken off them - it will not be - but there is no point in pretending that we will have the same resource and inputs to apply to this as we have had in the past,” he said.

The Chief Constable also warned that it doesn’t cost a lot of money for dissident republicans to fashion lethal explosive devices.

“People who have decided that they want to take their violent intent and turn it into explosions and gun attacks on communities and police officers do not need a lot of money to do that,” he said.

“I am not saying that there is no correlation between organised crime and violent dissident republicanism, but our assessment is that violent dissident republicanism is not awash with cash and whatever organised criminality happens to be going on and may be connected with that community, it does not seem to be necessarily invested in firearms and explosives.

“It is not that expensive to create a couple of hundredweight of home-made explosives with fertiliser. The recipe is pretty much open-source material,” he said.