Editorial: Northern Ireland cannot be rudderless in a security crisis

​That dissident republican terrorists have been able to access highly sensitive data on all PSNI staff is an almost unbelievable scandal.

There now needs to be a major investigation of how the police in Northern Ireland handle top secret information, led by London.

It is so serious that the UK government should do something that it should have done a while ago – take control of the governing of Northern Ireland.

It is outrageous that civil servants have been in charge, leading to haphazard decisions in a range of aspects of the province, including financial cuts in some areas and not others. It is utterly wrong to ask neutral public officials to make such contentious decisions.

But this security vacuum is another sphere in which Northern Ireland cannot be rudderless. In any even London should have long been taking a close eye on what is happening in NI, including the use of 'human rights' to neuter present policing and trash the reputations of the highly professional, vital policing of the past.

Think of the SDLP photo shoots of politicians outside MI5 headquarters in Co Down some years ago, protesting against 'spooks'. The UK government has a duty to ignore such nonsense and protect the lives of its citizens. The intelligence services have been essential on keeping tabs on dissident republicans who were plotting to murder people long before this data breach. Yet now, amongst other divulged information, the identities of officers who work with MI5 have been divulged.

In the NHS if you act so negligently that lives are ruined you face criminal sanction. Why not in the PSNI?

Our police service has a huge focus on issues like supposed 'hate crimes' that in fact often seem to be examples of people behaving very rudely. Yet it has not got secure ways of protecting top secret information.