Debate contribution: ‘The Police Service of Northern Ireland: An inspection of police effectiveness and efficiency’
Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on .
- MLA
- Mrs Naomi Long
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 29 April 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- ‘The Police Service of Northern Ireland: An inspection of police effectiveness and efficiency’
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4922034
Read the official Assembly record
Text
To be clear, the Department of Justice did not allow a gap to open up in funding or in numbers. The PSNI took decisions, for example, not to recruit police officers to replace those who had left. That decision was taken by the PSNI, not imposed upon it by the finances. That has had a knock-on effect, with a deterioration in numbers over time. In 2021, the Executive secured the resources to allow the PSNI to raise its numbers to 7,100. When I came back into office at the start of last year, the number, having reached that point, had dropped to 6,300. We have arrested the decline; that is the first stage. The second stage is about getting the business case through. I cannot give a timeline for it, but it is under active consideration by the Department of Finance. Getting that through, with the resource that we need to seek on the back of it, will allow us to start to recruit new officers. Some of the money is already available to the PSNI to start the recruitment process, and some additional money will need to be found. However, there is an upper limit to the number of officers that we can train and recruit in Northern Ireland. The upper limit for new officers coming through the police training college is around 500 a year. We lose around 350 by attrition, which means that, even at the college's peak throughput, we are talking about being able to add 150 newly trained officers a year. I have been discussing that with the Chief Constable. If there are other means of increasing the PSNI's complement, or other ways in which we can train people in order to ensure that we have PSNI officers available, we will look at them. Affordability will remain the biggest challenge, however, even if the business case is approved and successful.
315 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.03 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.93).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.02 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.01 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.02 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.02 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.93 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.03 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 1.00 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
| Parades, bonfires and commemorations | 0.00 |
| Irish language, Ulster-Scots and language policy | 0.00 |
| Sport (including the GAA), the arts and cultural bodies | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:28 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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