Not just the RUC but senior Garda officers are now alarmed at the reduction in strength and effectiveness of policing that has happened so dramatically in Northern Ireland.
By this summer the RUC may have lost half of its vital senior management ranks of superintendent and chief superintendent. Some 51 of these officers have opted to take early redundancy under the first phase of the scheme to restructure the RUC and increase Catholic recruitment.
Most of these 51 officers have left, taking leave time due to them before officially retiring on March 1st. Altogether about 170 "chiefs" and "supers" have been responsible for management. A further 30 are due to go before the end of the summer.
This will create a significant management deficit as the North heads into the traditionally difficult summer period of loyalist protests.
It is also understood that up to half of the RUC's detective branches will also be gone by the summer, as many officers with policing qualifications are leaving to take up posts with constabularies in Britain or Canada, without waiting for early redundancy packages.
RUC sources say there is also a considerable problem with absenteeism, which, they say, is due to a collapse in morale. One senior garda in the Border said there had been a dramatic fall-off in the responses of the RUC to requests for searches or information.
An officer at RUC headquarters at Brooklyn, Knock, in east Belfast, who spoke to The Irish Times said the "guts" were being torn out of the organisation. He said he was just waiting "to get out", like many others.
It is reported that at least four of the nine assistant chief constables (the equivalent of assistant commissioners in the Garda) are leaving the RUC this spring, as are a further 400 police officers from the rank of chief inspector down. Others are expected to follow. This is out of a full-time regular force of just under 8,500 officers.
The departures are so extensive that the RUC's Superintendents' Association, which has represented the two ranks in pay talks very effectively over the years, had no executive officers two weeks ago. A chief superintendent in a Border region is temporarily holding the position of president.
The head of the RUC press office, Chief Supt Roy McCune, was unavailable last week as he was taking leave before retirement.
Meanwhile, the Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, has promised to press ahead with swingeing changes in the RUC structure and management. The management structure of the RUC, with 12 regional divisions under RUC headquarters, is being expanded to 29 "districts".
Sir Ronnie has acknowledged that the departures from the RUC represent a "tremendous loss". But in a recent interview he said that structures were all in place so that their expertise and knowledge was not lost. He intends to advertise soon for around 200 recruits to start training in September.
However, officers on both sides of the Border said they expected there would be a major deficit in policing in the North, possibly for years, because of the unexpectedly heavy rate of departures and absenteeism.
Although official figures are not available, it is thought likely that as many as 2,000 officers have gone or will be gone by the end of this summer through resignations, natural "wastage" of people reaching retirement age and through the early redundancy scheme.
IT IS not clear how this shortfall can be resolved or how many people have applied to join the new force. Only two Garda officers, a superintendent and chief superintendent, responded to the request for applicants of these ranks to join. Most of these are from the full-time complement, which had stood at around 8,500. Under the proposals for restructuring the police force in Northern Ireland, the RUC Reserve of a further 4,500 full-time and part-time police is to be disbanded.
The RUC is waiting for a new police board which, if it is agreed, will oversee far-reaching changes in the policing service. As yet the two nationalist parties, the SDLP and Sinn Fein, have refused their allotted five seats on the board, which was supposed to be in place last December. The police board must be in place before the first 50:50 recruitment of Protestants and Catholics can go ahead. This was due to take place by the end of March.
The formal change of title from the RUC to the Police Service of Northern Ireland is to happen in September, and the phasing-out of the RUC Reserve is to follow it. The policing deficit in the next year, at least, will be exacerbated by the fact that even if the recruitment programme goes ahead as planned, the trained recruits will not be ready to take up their posts by early 2002.
During this month one of the most prominent US policing figures, Prof Tom Considine, is to begin work as the Oversight Commissioner for the policing changes. Mr Considine has said that transforming policing in Northern Ireland will probably take as much as a decade. He hoped the "critical elements" of the reforms would be in place within three years. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph in December, he said: "This has never been done before."
Since the IRA ceasefire has consolidated, Catholic applications to join the RUC have increased to 22 per cent. Until now, Catholic representation in the RUC has been around 8 per cent.
To encourage Catholics, the 1998 Police Act has introduced changes to the RUC oath of office and on the flying of the Union flag outside police stations.
The oath of allegiance, swearing undying loyalty to "our most bounteous sovereign who is the font of all government on these isles" is replaced by an affirmation.
Almost half of RUC officers are aged between 30 and 39, and many of them think they are too old to embark on a new career. A 1998 survey of RUC officers found that 90 per cent did not believe they were qualified to find other work.
Some £11.5 million sterling has been granted to the Police Retraining and Rehabilitation Trust (PRRT), to help retired officers to find new areas of employment. The PRRT also employs five psychologists to help with the often severe emotional and mental difficulties that RUC officers have encountered because of their years of service in dangerous conditions and exposure to traumatic situations.
A total of 301 RUC members were killed during the Troubles and more than 10 times this number suffered serious injuries.