£1.3m spent paying informers
THE PSNI spent over £1m paying informers over the past four years with the sum doubling between 2007 and 2011.
Police disclosed the £1,294,586 expenditure on covert human intelligence sources (CHIS) in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
The sum rose from £194,671 in 2007/8 to £299,000 in 2009 to £405,115 in 2009/110 before falling back slightly to £395,800 in 2010/11.
The average cost to the PSNI of paying informers each year was over £300,000.