Up to 500 officers would need to be recruited and decommissioned police stations reopened to protect the post-Brexit border on the island of Ireland.



Rank and file police warned on Thursday that the 6,621-member Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) was not adequately staffed to enforce even a soft frontier after the UK exits the European Union next year.



Brexit plan drawn up for border checks between NI and rest of UK Read more

After Brexit the 300-plus mile frontier from the north-west Atlantic shoreline to the Irish Sea in the east will be the UK’s only land border with an EU state.



The Police Federation for Northern Ireland also predicted it was “reasonable to assume” that any officers deployed to monitor the post-Brexit border would become “terrorist targets” from the anti-ceasefire, hardline, dissident republican factions.



At the federation’s annual conference outside Belfast on Thursday, its chair called on the government to immediately increase the PSNI’s budget to cope with the effect of Brexit.



Referring to the Troubles, when many B-roads spanning the border were closed and key routes blocked by militarised checkpoints, Mark Lindsay said: “We are painfully aware that even when we had 13,500 officers, supported by 26,000 soldiers, it proved a daily challenge to police the border.

“So, if we were stretched in the 70s, 80s and 90s, is it not fair to say that we will be well and truly incapable of performing the task with officer numbers of 6,621, or a sixth of what we had then?”



“By this time next year – despite talk of a two-year transition period – the border will assume greater importance. We don’t possess the numbers, the security apparatus or specialist resources for increased counter-terrorist search and support duties along the border.”

On planned station closures, Lindsay said “additional real estate will need to be retained” if the government was serious about deploying the PSNI, particularly to protect UK border and customs staff on any new Brexit frontier.



“I would anticipate that stations previously earmarked for closure will now need to be retained,” he added.



In a speech to 100 officers, Lindsay repeated returned to the theme of the PSNI facing attack despite the peace process. He said one way the the service had come under attack was in the debate about the legacy of the Troubles and how to deal with thousands of unsolved crimes connected to the conflict.

Lindsay said 302 police officers had been murdered and thousands injured during the Troubles, adding that the federation would never accept any plan for a general amnesty for all those responsible for murder and mayhem.



“Let me be clear: this organisation is totally opposed to any legislation which proposed an amnesty for any crime,” he said. “That’s any crime, whether committed by a police officer or terrorist from any side of the divide.”



Referring to officers murdered during the Troubles, Lindsay said: “Our colleagues did what was right. They must not be treated the same as the people who pulled the trigger or planted the bomb.

“They saved tens of thousands of lives while terrorist groupings wrought havoc and misery. It would be intolerable and massively offensive if their good names were to be used in the same breath as the killers who sought ‘parity of esteem’ by using a warped parity of misery and pain.”

