There were mixed reactions to the details of the £200 million sterling RUC severance scheme announced by the Northern Secretary yesterday.
Mr Mandelson said that with the announcement of the details of the scheme, a period of uncertainty had ended. "This is a unique scheme for a body of men and women who have served through some of the most difficult times imaginable," said Mr Mandelson.
"Taken overall, it is the most generous voluntary early-retirement scheme ever offered in the UK public sector, and it fully meets the government's commitment to sympathetic and generous treatment." Under the scheme, officers are entitled to pension enhancements and lump sums of up to three times annual pensionable pay. Some senior officers would be entitled to lump sums of £300,000 but the Police Federation of Northern Ireland said it was not satisfied with the package. Federation chairman Mr Les Rodgers said it would not be advising its members to take the package but rather that they carefully consider it and make up their own minds.
Mr David McClurg, secretary of the federation, said many members, particularly those with long service records, would feel particularly let down.
"The package under offer to them, the officers over 55 years of age, is only six months' salary, and given that some of them will have served 30 years in the Royal Ulster Constabulary through the most difficult times, it is not an awful lot."
Almost 2,000 officers are expected to go over the next few years during the drive to reduce core RUC numbers to 7,500, as recommended in the Patten report on the future of policing.
The Northern Ireland Office estimated that around 600 officers would leave in the first year of the scheme, which ends in March next year. Around 750 officers would leave the following year and 600 the next.
The chairperson of Sinn Fein, Mr Mitchell McLaughlin, said nationalists would be "deeply offended by the news that large rewards are to be paid to those in the RUC directly involved in the killing of many Catholics, the torture and ill-treatment of detainees, harassment and brutality and collusion with loyalist death squads".
The SDLP spokesman on policing, Mr Alex Attwood, said the scheme showed that members of the force were being "properly acknowledged for their contribution over 30 years of conflict".
Mr Attwood said he hoped this, in turn, would make policing associations "more inclined to accept the need for radical change in policing policy and practice".