Sinn Féin has come under renewed pressure to sign up to the new policing dispensation in Northern Ireland.
After the Policing Board chairman, Prof Desmond Rea, this week issued a number of appeals for Sinn Féin to join the board his deputy, Mr Denis Bradley, yesterday insisted that Sinn Féin could not justify boycotting the organisation.
As a recruitment campaign for the local District Policing Partnerships (DPPs) was launched by the board yesterday Mr Bradley said there was no reasonable argument for Sinn Féin to continue shunning the board.
The formation of the DPPs is another step in the implementation of police reform as envisaged under Patten and the Belfast Agreement.
Their role is to consult with police at local level and to monitor and comment on their performance.
The DPPs are scheduled to be up and running early in the new year. There will be one DPP in each of the North's 26 local authorities, with Belfast having four sub-groups of the DPP to cover north, south, east and west Belfast.
The majority of the members of each DPP will be local councillors with a sizeable minority who are independent members.
The membership of each DPP will be 19, 17 or 15, depending on the size of each local authority. The councillor/independent ratio respectively will be 10:9, 9:8 and 8:7. There will be six members on each of the Belfast sub-groups.
Unionist politicians have expressed concerns that the DPPs would be a "back door" for IRA members to join the partnerships and have a say in policing.
Under the legislation anyone who has served a prison sentence, or received a suspended sentence, for serious crime is banned from joining the DPPs. Republican or loyalist paramilitaries who have avoided such sentences however could be members.
Sinn Féin has refused to sign up to the new policing arrangements, although senior party members have stated that they want to join both the board and the DPPs, but only when policing legislation is amended.
The Sinn Féin spokesman on policing, Mr Gerry Kelly, yesterday complained that former prisoners could not serve on the DPPs.
"Ex-POWs are disqualified from being independent members of the DPPs despite the fact that Patten recommended that no barrier should be erected to the participation of nationalists and republicans," he said.
Prof Rea and Mr Bradley yesterday launched the campaign to recruit the independent members.
Prof Rea said: "The DPPs will not succeed unless they are inclusive in their make-up with voices from all sections of the community being heard."
Mr Bradley said Sinn Féin should end its boycott, and suggested the party might join the board in the coming months.
He said Sinn Féin's demands for a totally accountable policing system were being substantially met.
"There's no political reason in the world why Sinn Féin should not be on this board in a short period of time," Mr Bradley added.
Prof Rea said the success of the DPPs was crucially dependent on the public responding to the campaign to recruit independent members.
The standard allowance for DPPs members are: chairman £4,800; deputy chairman £3,600 and member £2,400. Allowances payable to members of the Belfast DPP are: chairman £8,400; deputy chairman £6,300; chairman of sub-group £4,700; deputy chairman of sub-group £4,500; and member £4,200.
