Mr. Alan Todd:

No. In the absence of the Executive, we are in the unfortunate position of having to work with a year-by-year budget. Normally the PSNI would plan on the basis of a three to five-year strategic budget. For three or four years there has been a year-by-year settlement, sometimes even after the financial year has begun and which generally involves less than what we had in the previous year in real terms. There is no prospect of a substantial uplift in police officer numbers. In fact, the pressure is always downwards. Depending on what Brexit and policing requirements look like, there will be questions about whether there is a need for resources. While the questions have been asked, no promises have been given. In the short term, it is a reasonable proposition to seek to increase the level of student officer recruitment as a contingency measure in the context of what Brexit might look like, but such is the attrition rate in the organisation owing to the number of officers retiring that, if we were to stop recruiting, we would come straight back to the numbers we now have and it would not serve to increase the size of the organisation significantly.

The short answer is "No", but there is a wider context to it.