![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1_Jacqui-Durkin.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFirst Minister Michelle O\u2019Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly have today announced the appointment of Jacqui Durkin as the new Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
20:17, 24 Jun 2026Updated 20:22, 24 Jun 2026<\/p>\n
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Jacqui Durkin the new Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland<\/p>\n
A new Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland<\/a> has been appointed and will start her role later this week.<\/p>\n Jacqui Durkin has been announced as the new ombudsman by First Minister Michelle O\u2019Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, and takes over from Marie Anderson who retired at the end of last year.<\/p>\n Ms Durkin has served as the Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice in Northern Ireland<\/a> since November 2019 with the Ministers saying she “brings extensive senior leadership experience and a strong track record in oversight, governance and public service.” Ms Durkin will start the role on June 26.<\/p>\n The appointment has been welcomed by Justice Minister Naomi Long<\/a> who said: \u201cI would like to extend my best wishes to Jacqui in her new position as Police Ombudsman and place on record my sincere thanks for the leadership and expertise that she demonstrated during her tenure as Chief Inspector.<\/p>\n \u201cJacqui brings a wealth of experience to the role of Police Ombudsman and I wish her every success during her tenure.\u201d<\/p>\n Minister Long continued: \u201cThe Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice in Northern Ireland plays a crucial role in fostering improvements throughout the justice sector.<\/p>\n \u201cThe inspection programme overseen by the Chief Inspector enables us to develop a more effective and efficient criminal justice system for the people of Northern Ireland and Jacqui will bring a track record of leadership and achievement to her new role.\u201d<\/p>\n The DoJ has said an announcement about Ms Durkin\u2019s replacement at the Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland, an independent public body established under the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002, will be made in due course.<\/p>\n For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage<\/strong> here<\/a> and sign up to our daily newsletter<\/a> here.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First Minister Michelle O\u2019Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly have today announced the appointment of Jacqui Durkin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1048347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[14925,922,1434,91391,1144,255199,1618,11191,16,15],"class_list":["post-1048346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-department-of-justice","tag-emma-little-pengelly","tag-michelle-oneill","tag-naomi-long","tag-northern-ireland","tag-police-ombudsman","tag-psni","tag-stormont","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116808584259858625","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1048347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}