Lawyers got most of £25m to settle cases, says PSNI

The Northern Ireland Police Service (PSNI) paid £ 25 million to solve civil cases related to problems in recent years and most went to lawyers, police chief told parliamentarians.

Jon Boutcher said the lawyers received almost 18 million, more than twice the obolic quantity of the victims who filed the statements.

I was giving evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

Boutcher described Legacy as “a green field for lawyers” due to “a dropout approach to all security agencies around the dissemination of information.”

Boutcher said that the PSNI was not properly financed for inherited problems and that the costs would pay for the recruitment of additional hungry or officers.

PSNIS costs cover not only judicial cases, but also operate their branch of Legacy investigations (Lib).

“We are spending approximately 20 million a year. That would be around 400 police,” he said.

“But we have the leg with this mill stone, this anchor, which contains the psni back.

“It is a considerable burden for us.”

The PSNI is currently dealing with 1,100 civil actions: in 2014 the figure was 150.

The chief of his LIB, the Chief Superintendent of Detective, Claire McGuigan, said: “We have nowhere the resources to deal with them, nor the money to solve them.

“We are in a position that is very, very difficult and does not trust the community because it seems that we are storing.”

She said that the PSNI continues to have “obligations” despite the fact that the Legacy law passes problems to a new organism, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR).

The former police officer, Nala O’Loan, also generates evidence to the committee.

She told the committee that it was not reasonable to expect the PSNI to use “the current budget to finance yesterday’s cases.”

“The government government must be ready to reserve a specific budget for these matters,” he said.