Ronnie Flanagan is bowing out as Chief Constable after a 32-year police career. He is convinced that the force's various problems are on the verge of resolution, he tells Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Sir Ronnie Flanagan is a devotee of the work of W. B. Yeats. On a wall in his office at police headquarters at Knock in east Belfast, which he vacates at the weekend, is a print of the poem, "He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" that has the famous line "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams".
Somebody wearing heavy, hobnailed boots obviously trod on any dreams he entertained of cheerfully walking away from his job as chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland with his reputation fully intact. The Nuala O'Loan row and the Castlereagh break-in put paid to that hope.
None the less in this Irish Times interview he is sanguine about this unfortunate coda to his career. If some of these problems depart as he departs the scene then "all to the good" for his successors, he says. "There is an old saying here: when they are getting at me they are leaving somebody else alone." In any case, when the history books are written these may be footnotes rather than the main story. As the British and Irish governments fully realise and appreciate, Ronnie Flanagan was a police officer with the political touch: he ensured the relatively harmonious transition of the RUC to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
The first batch of PSNI recruits start graduating on a rolling basis from next week. As per Patten, the new cops on the beat will be 50:50 in terms of Catholic and Protestant background. Sir Ronnie was unimpressed with Mr Gerry Adams's assertion that while there may be new Catholics in the force, not one of them could be described as nationalist or republican.
"To suggest that our new recruits and those of the Catholic faith in some way can only be closet unionists or Castle Catholics is an unwarranted slur on people who no doubt come from a whole range of political opinion, as they are entitled to do," he said.
The SDLP has expressed misgivings about Sir Ronnie attending the graduation ceremony on Friday week, but he plans to be there. He also had a little dig at SDLP Assembly member and Policing Board member Mr Alex Attwood. They were reputed to enjoy a good working and personal relationship but that did not prevent Mr Attwood saying that Sir Ronnie would be a "lame duck" chief constable in his final weeks in office.
"I think his comments said much more about him at that particular time than they said about me," said Sir Ronnie.
Sir Ronnie said he was "in no doubt" that Sinn Féin would join the Policing Board. "The sooner the better, and any reasons for not participating are almost daily diminishing," he added.
With all the speculation about IRA decommissioning which Sir Ronnie himself intensified this week, he said he could envisage an end to the IRA. "As a possibility I have no doubt that the republican movement is now on a road, the destination of which as a natural conclusion is that the IRA should not exist."
As for the main loyalist paramilitaries, he had no intelligence to suggest that they might start decommissioning imminently. And while there had been PSNI, Garda and international policing successes against the "Real" and Continuity IRA they still posed a "real threat".
A further threat to the community was organised crime, some of it run by paramilitaries, some by ordinary criminal gangs. He favoured proposed new legislation which, similar to the Criminal Assets Bureau in the South, would "hit these people where it hurts, in their pockets".
The worst moments of his 32-year career was trying to console those bereaved by the murder of police officers. The early release of prisoners and seeing some former paramilitaries who could have been involved in these acts winning political respectability might cause problems at a personal level.
"But that cannot be allowed to interfere with the professional discharge or your duty."
For much of his career and during the worst period of the troubles Sir Ronnie was at the cutting edge of policing - he was twice head of the Special Branch and fully immersed in that clandestine and often murky world. Were there any memories that prevented him sleeping at night? "Personally having come through all of that I am satisfied that what we did was responsible for saving countless lives," he said.
He didn't want to revisit his spat with the Police Ombudsman, Mrs Nuala O'Loan, apart from reasserting that he did not accept that her investigation of the police handling of the Omagh bomb was "fair and rigorous", and again acknowledging that his suicide remark was "crass" and insensitive.
As for the break-in at Castlereagh, he could provide no useful update. He gave the old cop's line, "Nothing is ruled out and everything is ruled in." He agreed that there could be some emulation in the Republic of the strengthened accountability element to the new policing dispensation involving the PSNI, the Policing Board and the Ombudsman. "No two jurisdictions are the same but certainly in terms of the need for rigorous mechanisms for accountability that has to have universal application."
Sir Ronnie takes up his new post with Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary shortly. Mr Colin Cramphorn will replace him as acting chief constable until a successor is found, possibly some time in the autumn. There have been problems of personnel shortages, absenteeism and low morale, but he is convinced they are on the verge of resolution.
For the PSNI to gain widespread support he stresses that the community must realise that this is a social as well as a policing issue. He brings Yeats into the social/policing equation when concluding the interview: "There is one phrase about the best lacking all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Well, I think the best in this society have been quiet for too long, and must become passionately intense about peace, in the way that sadly some of the worst in society have been full of passionate intensity about violence."