Northern Ireland’s police chief has insisted he will not quit ahead of a crunch meeting over the force’s “monumental” data leak.
Some 10,000 Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers and staff have been affected by the breach, which emerged on Tuesday, and occurred in response to a Freedom of Information request.
In its response to the request, PSNI published a table which contained the rank and grade data of officers and staff, but also included detailed information that attached the surname, initial, location and departments for all employees.
The data was potentially visible to the public for between two and a half to three hours.
Senior officers are to face a grilling about the breach and its knock-on effects for officers working in intelligence, undercover and counter-terrorism.
But Simon Byrne, PSNI’s chief constable, told the Financial Times when asked if he was intending to resign over the leak: “No, I am not.”
He has cut short a family holiday to return to Belfast to be questioned by politicians at an emergency meeting of the Northern Ireland Policing Board on Thursday.
On Wednesday, it emerged that the theft of documents, including a spreadsheet containing the names of more than 200 serving officers and staff, and a police issue laptop and radio, from a car in Newtownabbey in July, is also being investigated.
PSNI Asst Chief Constable Chris Todd has apologised to officers and staff over that day’s data breach, which he said was being treated as a “critical incident”.
Mr Todd said all the officers and staff affected have been contacted to make them aware and an initial notification has been made to the Information Commissioner about the breach.
Chris Heaton-Harris, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, spoke to Mr Byrne on Wednesday about the breach, which he described as a “very serious matter”.
The Police Federation for Northern Ireland, which represents rank and file officers, said they have been inundated with calls from worried officers.
Liam Kelly, from the body, said the breach was “monumental”, particularly as unique threats to police officers in Northern Ireland, steeped in the history of tension between loyalists and unionists, meant that many “go to great lengths to protect their identities”.
He said: “Urgent answers are required. How did this happen? What steps were put in place to advise and safeguard so many colleagues?
“The major security breach was bad enough, but this heaps further additional pressure on the PSNI to produce credible explanations around data security protocols and the impact on officer safety. Speed is of the essence.”
Meanwhile, Ryan Elliott, of Cleaver Fulton Rankin solicitors, predicted a flood of legal cases, as two senior officers have instructed him to send pre-proceedings letters to the chief constables and “the emails just keep coming in”.
He told the Belfast Telegraph that compensation payouts were hard to predict but each individual could be entitled to a minimum of £10,000 each, amounting to £100 million across all those affected.
“Then there’s the cost of potentially having to relocate some officers, a massive fine from the Information Commissioner, the cost of improving IT systems and legal fees – it’s incredible,” he said.
Police in the region are under threat from terrorists, with the current assessed level of threat at severe, meaning an attack is highly likely. More than 300 police officers were killed during the Troubles.
In February, senior detective John Caldwell was seriously injured when he was shot by gunmen at a sports complex in Co Tyrone.
Earlier this year, Mr Byrne said he receives briefings almost every day about plots to attack and kill his officers, adding that the ongoing threat from dissident republicans remains a “real worry”.