THE extra financial cost of policing the Drumcree standoff and its aftermath amounted to more than £10 million, mostly incurred on RUC overtime payments. And a member of the Northern Ireland Police Authority has warned that the cost may have to be absorbed by other public services such as health and education.
The £10 million figure was given by the chairman of the Police Authority's Support Services Committee, Mr Billy Martin, when he spoke at the opening of a new RUC station on the Lisburn Road in Belfast.
The new building, which cost almost £4 million, replaces a station which was completely destroyed in an 800lb vehicle bomb attack in December 1986.
Mr Martin said that the cost in purely financial terms of the recent civil disturbances had been staggering, and much needed police accommodation planned for other areas might suffer delays or even downsizing.
The Alliance Party deputy leader, Mr Seamus Close, suggested that it might be time for organisations to start paying for the policing of their events. The mammoth cost of policing and the subsequent riot damage could have been better spent if so called political leaders put real issues before triumphalism and tribalism.
"Why should the vast majority of decent people have to suffer financially because of the actions of bigots on both sides of this community?" he asked.
Mr George Patten, executive officer of the Orange Order, said, however, that the order had not chosen to get into the situation in Drumcree. A "silly decision by the authorities" had resulted in a lot of extra policing. One could not put a monetary price on a question of civil liberties.
The Grand Master of the Orange Order, the Rev Martin Smyth MP said the RUC must take some responsibility for making "a wrong decision" about the standoff and therefore causing a multi million pound bill for over time payments.
Mr Smyth said he regretted and deplored any resulting damage to property that had occurred, but he blamed republican elements for causing most of it.
"Those who found themselves in residents' associations, who travelled around the country to be provoked, who had come from Dungannon and Coalisland to be provoked on the Ormeau Road, who have manipulated local people's emotions, they are responsible.
"If they want, as they say, parity of esteem with equal rights, then they have got to grant it to those with whom they disagree," Mr Smyth said.
Meanwhile, the RUC has confirmed that 12 officers and their families are still out of their homes after recent events in Drumcree, Derry and Dunloy.
About another 25 members of the force have applied to be rehoused in the wake of the wave of intimidation. However, most of the 146 officers against whom threats were made have returned home.