Every time the IRA carries out a 'punishment' attack the Good Friday Agreement is "injured", the SDLP said last night. Policing Board member Alex Attwood was reacting to comments by Chief Constable Hugh Orde in an interview in the Irish News yesterday.
Mr Orde claimed that the IRA had carried out more 'punishment' attacks in the last few months, knowing that with no imminent prospect of assembly elections, it could not damage Sinn Féin.
"Lack of elections has allowed them to free up and go back and do what they do best – which is hurt people," he said.
Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly responded by accusing Mr Orde of "political intervention and electioneering".
"When Hugh Orde came here he said he was a policeman, not a politician. His interview... was very political, all against Sinn Féin," he said.
"He came here, he says, to change the RUC but unfortunately I think the RUC changed him."
"We are against punishment beatings or shootings. If you look at the statistics over a number of years, they have decreased because we have supported other alternatives to this type of punishment.
"The fact that statistics have gone up slightly in the months that (Mr Orde) described, I have no comment on that."
But Mr Attwood said: "The SDLP has warned time and again that allowing a political vacuum to develop will only result in an increase in paramilitarism. Hugh Orde's comments about an increase in punishment beatings would suggest that this is what we are now witnessing.
"It is time to get this process back on track and send a clear message to all paramilitaries that this society doesn't want or need them."
Mr Orde had also said it was "highly likely" that the IRA was behind the suspected kidnap and murder of Co Armagh man Gareth O'Connor in May.
