Irish American reaction as Hugh Orde steps down

“He did an absolutely superb job in an almost impossible position,” Lynch told IrishCentral.

“It was a real baptism of fire for him when he took over – a lot of the time, he was between a rock and hard place. There were a lot of strong personalities he had to deal with – men like Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley are no pushovers.”

Reform of policing in Northern Ireland was one of the politically most difficult – and important - tasks to be undertaken following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Nationalists, many of whom hated the old police service, the RUC, identifying it as a symbol of British oppression, wanted a speedy pace of reform.

But some of these reforms were very difficult for unionists to stomach: many RUC members had been killed by the IRA in the Troubles, and some unionists felt that changing its name as well as removing old flags and symbols associated with the RUC, was an insult to to RUC members.

In other words, much of the time, Orde had to walk a very careful path. He inevitably ended up taking criticism from both nationalists and unionists, but managed to earn the respect from both.

“’People often said to us: ‘If you can’t get policing right, you can’t get the Good Friday Agreement right,’” Lynch said. “There were 175 recommendations issued by the Patten Commission – and if you look at them now, I think almost all of them have been implemented.”

Bill Flynn, the former chairman of Mutual of America, who was one of a group of Irish Americans who acted as a liason between Sinn Fein and the U.S. Government in the 1990s, told IrishCentral that Orde "brought a much wider degree of support for the police. And all of this is going to be much needed now that these dissidents are acting up."

Flynn, who described Orde as a close personal friend, described Orde as "the Ray Kelly of Northern Ireland."

Rita O’Hare, the representative of Sinn Fein to the U.S., told IrishCentral that Orde “came in to a very difficult position.”

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Nster.com