PSNI set to resume legacy investigations and reviews

By Rebecca Black, PA

Police probes into incidents from Northern Ireland's troubled past are set to resume.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable Simon Byrne announced last month that legacy investigations and reviews would be paused during the coronavirus pandemic to free up officers.

On Thursday, it was announced that the suspension was to be lifted.

The PSNI's Legacy Investigation Branch is dealing with more than 1,000 unresolved cases.

Deputy Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said officers and staff will resume duties from May 1.

"A decision was taken by the PSNI's Service Executive Team on March 24 to temporarily suspend all legacy investigations and to refocus this resource to support the PSNI's response to Operation TALLA (the UK police response to Covid-19)," he said.

"Legacy Investigation Branch was one of a number of functions within PSNI that were redeployed in order to provide immediate resilience to PSNI's critical functions.

"Following a meeting of the PSNI's Service Executive Team on Wednesday April 22, it was agreed that this temporary suspension would be lifted and that officers and staff within Legacy Investigation Branch would resume their normal duties with effect from May 1 2020.

"Having implemented a range of social distancing measures, we have been able to limit the numbers of Covid-19-related absences to levels which have allowed us to sustain service delivery across the organisation and in this case return officers who had been providing resilience to those functions to their core roles."