Lord Empey:

Paramilitarism has been a scourge for a long time and it has not been dealt with as effectively as it should have been. After 25 years, organisations still exist and rackets and criminality are still there.

It is being augmented by people trafficking and various other smuggling activities that have been going on for years, for example, in bogus veterinary medicines. The absence of functioning institutions that can co-operate between London, Dublin and Belfast on criminal matters clearly is not helping to have a consistent and persistent policy of suppressing those organisations.

As to whether people could have been more robust, there is no answer that to that. One cannot say "No", as people could do better, but these organisations have existed throughout the community for many years. One can see it on my own patch, with people running around in Range Rovers and wearing gold chains. The dogs in the street know where they are getting the money from. It is obvious to everyone and people are not stupid.

It is probably fair to say that the police service has been less effective in dealing with these matters but, as the committee will be well aware, the PSNI is understrength. After the Patten report, we were promised 7,500 full-time constables. We do not have that. We are not even close to it. At the rate of depletion of the police, the PSNI will be falling behind further over the next year due to financial reasons. We need a strong and effective police service to tackle this type of activity, but ours is under considerable strain, is underfunded and is below the level that we were promised. All of these factors combined move us into a position where there has not been persistent pressure on these organisations.