The Democratic Unionist Party has accused the British government of creating "a smokescreen" around prisoner releases by appointing 10 highly-qualified commissioners to oversee the scheme.
"The gates will be open and in two years every one of these prisoners belonging to certain organisations will get out, whether they have been vetted by a criminologist and a psychologist or not," the DUP security spokesman, Mr Gregory Campbell, said.
The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, announced on Thursday the 10 people who will sit on the Sentence Review Commission. They include a psychiatrist, a barrister, a social worker and a criminologist.
Mr Campbell said: "They are trying to make people believe prisoners will have to go through a tight vetting procedure which these people are going to oversee. All of that is patent nonsense."
A senior negotiator in the Ulster Unionist Party, Mr Dermot Nesbitt, said he was concerned at the "haste" with which prisoner releases were going ahead when other aspects of the Belfast Agreement, such as decommissioning of illegally-held weapons, were taking place more slowly.