Justice Minister Naomi Long has welcomed a "significant reduction" of paramilitary-style attacks in Northern Ireland in 2024.
The Minister was responding to a question from her Alliance Party colleague Stewart Dickson when she informed MLAs that according to the latest figures from the PSNI, there had been a 44 per cent decrease in the number of reported paramilitary-style attacks in 2024 and approximately a 75 per cent reduction in the number of casualties as a result of these attacks.
During the last year, there were 28 paramilitary style attacks reported to the PSNI, down from 50 in 2023 and just five resulting in casualties, with the Minister saying there were a number of factors that have led to the reduction.
The Minister also condemned two recent paramilitary-style attacks, including a pensioner who was shot in Coleraine and a teenager who was shot in Newtownards.
"Such barbaric brutality has no place in our community.These attacks must stop," the Minister said.
"Whilst there is likely to be a range of factors affecting the reduction, I must commend the Executive Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime on the work being done to address this complex societal and generational issue.Over the last 8 years, EPPOC has been testing innovative interventions aimed at tackling paramilitary harm in the here and now and breaking the cycle of violence for future generations.
"These include those who support victims of paramilitary harm, improving outcomes for individuals and helping break the victim-perpetrator cycle, targeted youth work delivered in a variety of ways, including through street-based initiatives and even in emergency departments, and helping to prevent young people at risk of paramilitary exploitation and abuse from becoming engaged in criminality in the first place are just some of the structures we have put in place."
The Minister told the Assembly that since 2021, the programme has both developed and tested a range of interventions involving over 2500 victims of paramilitary harm who have been directly supported by the programme but agreed with UUP MLA Doug Beattie that the statistics do not tell the whole picture.
"Without doubt, the rate of harm the paramilitaries inflict on our communities is extensive and wide-ranging, and the member has already name-checked quite a number of the most common, but of course, it is not limited to that," she said.
"We know things like child sexual and criminal exploitation, and many others are a feature of paramilitaries in our community.Ultimately, whilst I want to seek to reduce the harm, Of paramilitaries in the community, what I want more than anything is to end the existence of paramilitaries in our community.
"That is a permanent solution to what we face as a community, and I think it needs to be accelerated."
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