Catholic police officers in Northern Ireland are asking if they should bring firearms when they attend mass amid safety fears after a data breach, MPs have been told.
Simon Byrne, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), resigned from his position yesterday, following the data breach in August which resulted in information on about 9,500 officers and staff being accidentally disclosed online.
He had also been under intense pressure since a court ruling that he had unlawfully disciplined two junior officers.
Mr Byrne had been due to attend today’s session of parliament’s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which heard evidence of the impact the data breach has had on “scared” and “horrified” PSNI officers and civilian staff.
The MPs on the committee were told Catholic members of the PSNI had been encouraged to bring weapons to mass since the data breach.
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Superintendent Gerry Murray, the chairperson of the Catholic Police Guild of Northern Ireland, said: “We have had officers resigning, going from the organisation.
“Our members are frightened, scared… have no idea what tomorrow will bring for them.
“I have incidents where young Catholic officers are asking me do they carry their personal protection weapon when they go to mass?”
Supt Murray said that the advice he has given is “yes, you do”.
“The idea is that they should feel safe while entering the Catholic Church and also leaving the Catholic Church, and there’s no better way, the issue of the personal protection weapon is for that, for personal protection,” he said.
“We are in a dark space. We are in a downward spiral,” Liam Kelly, the chair of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, also told the committee.
“Despite it being 25 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, we are finding we are having to police against the backdrop of a severe terrorist threat.”
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Appearing at the committee instead of Simon Byrne, PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd apologised to his police colleagues for the data breach.
“I am deeply sorry this happened on my watch,” he told the politicians.
He explained the Excel spreadsheet sent by the PSNI to a Freedom of Information (FOI) website had a tab containing the additional data of thousands of employees – which should not have been released – obscured visually by another tab, “effectively putting a sheet over another sheet and obscuring it to the naked eye”.
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‘This smacks of incompetence, doesn’t it?’
The committee chair, Simon Hoare MP, asked Mr Todd if “nobody noticed the size of the file”.
“Regrettably not,” replied the senior officer.
“This just now smacks of incompetence, doesn’t it?” Mr Hoare responded.
“I think we need to look beyond incompetence on an individual human basis,” replied Mr Todd, “and look at the competence of the system, and the process which has allowed that mistake to happen.”
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The assistant chief constable also confirmed the spreadsheet had not been password-protected when it was sent out, something that would be examined by the internal review group.
He said the PSNI had ruled out the possibility that the breach was a deliberate action.
The police had already reviewed two years’ worth of FOI responses, as well as 501 submissions to the whatdotheyknow.com website, and had found no other similar issues, Mr Todd added.
“We’re confident that this was an isolated incident,” he said.
Almost 4,000 officers had contacted the threat assessment group, according to Mr Todd, and the PSNI had stepped up additional safety and reassurance patrols to protect staff since the breach.
