{"id":296262,"date":"2026-01-21T19:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T19:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/296262\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T19:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T19:01:11","slug":"loyalist-paramilitaries-community-workers-by-day-terrorists-at-night-former-psni-chief-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/296262\/","title":{"rendered":"Loyalist paramilitaries \u2018community workers by day, terrorists at night\u2019 \u2013 former PSNI chief \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loyalist paramilitaries were often behaving as \u201ccommunity workers by day and terrorists by night\u201d, former Police Service of Northern Ireland<\/a> (PSNI) chief constable George Hamilton has told a Westminster committee.<\/p>\n

Mr Hamilton, who led the PSNI from 2014 to 2019, said loyalist communities must be empowered to resist the influence of paramilitaries in their neighbourhoods who ruled by fear and intimidation.<\/p>\n

Though supportive, Mr Hamilton and his predecessor Hugh Orde raised doubts about the likelihood of success of the new investigation into the existence of loyalist groups<\/a> set up by the Irish and British governments last September.<\/p>\n

Fleur Ravensbergen, an independent conflict-resolution and negotiation expert, was appointed to assess whether there was merit<\/a> in and support for formal engagement with the paramilitary groups to bring about their end.<\/p>\n

Some security briefings suggest the Ulster Defence Association<\/a> has up to 12,000 members today \u2013 more than it had at the time of the 1998 Belfast Agreement<\/a>, though many are said to be \u201ccard-carrying only\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of these people are still behaving in the same coercive, controlling way around their communities,\u201d Mr Hamilton told the House of Commons<\/a> Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Wednesday..<\/p>\n

\u201cThese groups are not legitimate, but they do have extensive control within communities, so their view of policing is burning out the drugs house, but it\u2019s probably going to be a drugs competitor that they\u2019re burning out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such coercive control \u201cundermines the ability of the police to operate if there is an alternative policing faction essentially operating within the community\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Hamilton and Mr Orde both said the costs attached to legacy investigations and any subsequent legal claims must be completely separated from today\u2019s PSNI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funding needs to be completely separated out from policing because it\u2019s just a constant suck on money,\u201d Mr Hamilton said.<\/p>\n

Operation Kenova, the long-running investigation into the activities of Freddie Scappaticci<\/a>, the British Army spy in the Provisional IRA<\/a>, cost more than twice as much and lasted twice as long as originally thought, he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Orde strongly defended the Historical Enquiry Team (HET) he set up to investigate legacy cases, which was eventually brought down by a sharply critical report from HM Inspector of Constabulary in 2015.<\/p>\n

Still clearly angry about the closure of the HET, Mr Orde said he remained \u201cvery proud of the work they did\u201d and the information about killings that they were able to share with victims\u2019 families.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe told the families whatever we found out, which for many families was all they wanted to know,\u201d said Mr Orde, who was chief constable from 2002 to 2009.<\/p>\n

The civil costs of meeting claims for reparations from victims\u2019 families now \u201cseem uncontrollable\u201d, but most money being paid over by the PSNI was going to lawyers, not the families, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will financially cripple operational frontline policing in Northern Ireland,\u201d he said, saying that it \u201csoaks resources\u201d away from dealing with today\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n

Rejecting charges of collusion and improper conduct by officers during the Troubles \u201cin all bar a few cases\u201d, Mr Hamilton said today\u2019s investigations did not consider that many investigations conducted during the three-decade conflict were flawed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not so much that a lot of the investigative standards followed during the Troubles are way short of what we have today, but rather that every time a report comes out it\u2019s almost like a shock and a surprise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe incompetence or poor investigative standards of yesteryear gets translated in some communities where there is a bit of a confidence deficit anyway in policing into collusion, into conspiracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be a small number of cases where practice went on that shouldn\u2019t have happened, but for the most part it was just substandard investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Loyalist paramilitaries were often behaving as \u201ccommunity workers by day and terrorists by night\u201d, former Police Service of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[23936,9,10,23935,13,14,120235,6,93810,6439,11,12,15,16,5,954,952,7,8,36276,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-296262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-belfast-agreement","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-common-ground","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-freddie-scappaticci","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-house-of-commons","17":"tag-irish-republican-army","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-northern-ireland","24":"tag-police-service-of-northern-ireland-psni","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories","27":"tag-ulster-defence-association","28":"tag-world","29":"tag-world-news","30":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115934637790306988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}