The Chief Constable and the Police Ombudsman present their reports on the Omagh bombing investigation at a private meeting of the North's Policing Board this afternoon.
Sir Ronnie Flanagan and Mrs Nuala O'Loan will speak to their respective reports and then take questions. The presentations will take place separately.
The meeting follows criticism by unionists of a call by the SDLP leader for an outsider to head the Omagh investigation. Mr Mark Durkan, stressing the six recommendations on the way ahead for the investigation included in Mrs O'Loan's report in December, said the hunt for the "Real IRA" bombers who killed 29 people in Omagh in August 1998 should be led by an officer from outside.
Sir Ronnie has not accepted this recommendation. But, in his answer to the ombudsman's withering criticisms of the Omagh investigation released on January 24th, he said a senior officer from the Merseyside force would be drafted in to act as special adviser to the investigation.
An Ulster Unionist member of the Policing Board, Mr Fred Cobain, and the DUP's Mr Sammy Wilson both criticised the SDLP leader.
Mr Cobain said Mr Durkan was adopting a political stance which would divide members of the board along party lines. "What Mark Durkan said isn't in the best interests of the Policing Board, the victims or the police themselves in taking up what is clearly a political stance on this issue before the board has made judgment. His intervention has really compromised how the SDLP representatives on the board are going to go on this issue."
Mr Wilson said there was "no clear reasoning behind Mr Durkan's call", adding that the board seemed set for a "major political split" over the recommendations contained in Mrs O'Loan's report."Hopefully, the SDLP representatives on the Policing Board will ignore the attempts of their leader to make political capital out of the Omagh bomb allegations," he said.
"The Policing Board has a duty to ensure that if mistakes were made they are not repeated and if officers have been wrongly branded they are protected and restrictions are placed on the ombudsman's office to ensure that the same does not happen again."
This could prove to be a critical week for the board. It will meet again on Thursday in public and is firmly in the spotlight after the publication of Sir Ronnie's and Mrs O'Loan's reports.