BELFAST (Reuters) – Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill said on Friday that for the first time, Sinn Féin, which has so far been tepid about supporting the force established after the region’s 1998 peace deal, Attended a police graduation ceremony.
The Protestant-dominated Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) is the Constabulary of Northern Ireland under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of violence between Irish nationalists and pro-British trade unionists seeking a united Ireland. (PSNI). British army.
However, some in Sinn Féin complained that the new faction had too much in common with the RUC to go so far as to encourage Catholic participation.
In 2007 the party agreed to join the Police Commission, which oversees the work of the PSNI, and in 2020 it publicly supported a police recruitment campaign for the first time.
PSNI Chief Constable John Boucher told BBC Northern Ireland that the decision to attend the ceremony was “very welcome and a very positive gesture”.
Mr Butcher warmly welcomed Mr O’Neill upon his arrival at Belfast Barracks ahead of the ceremony.
The visit comes just days after Mr O’Neill became the UK region’s first Irish nationalist prime minister and lobbied Britain’s trade unionist rivals to promise to be a “prime minister for everyone”. I was disappointed.
Justice Minister Naomi Long, of the Cross-Community Alliance party, said Mr O’Neill’s appearance was “probably long overdue, but it was certainly a good start in terms of demonstrating a commitment to policing and justice”. Ta.
(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson and Conor Humphries; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar)