Below are the words of Lord Morrow of the DUP made during an Assembly debate:
We hear constantly of police officers retiring, picking up their redundancy package and, in a very short time, being back in the policing service. Were there not a large pool of young graduates and ably qualified officers ready to take up those posts, that might be all right. That is another challenge for the Minister. He should take a long, hard, serious look at police officers who retire and immediately re-enter the policing system. When there is a pool of able and capable police officers waiting to take up posts, it cannot be right by anyone’s standards.
Substitute the references above to police officers with teachers and you have the authentic version of Morrow’s speech. As Ian Knox’s excellent sketch in today’s Irish News highlights, retired police officers have collectively signed off with packages that have amounted to nearly half a billion pounds (something which makes unionist complaints about the £190 million spent on Saville sound rather churlish.)
Having taken a firm stance against the re-employment of retired teachers who have been re-employed by schools, the DUP have taken a completely different stance with regard to the re-employment of former police officers. One rule for some and all that…..