THE two main nationalist parties have told senior PSNI the reputation of the service is "zero" after it emerged the force failed to disclose "significant" information to the Police Ombudsman.
The publication of three Police Ombudsman reports covering more than 20 loyalist murders has been delayed after the information was found on police computers.
It is understood some of the fresh information is linked to a shipment of loyalist weapons smuggled into the north in the late 1980s.
Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire said the new information relates to "sensitive material, intelligence-led material, and includes information (on) covert policing".
Details of the new information came to light after the ombudsman became aware that police were preparing to disclose material as part of a civil case being taken by relatives of people killed in the Ormeau Road attack.
The PSNI has blamed a combination of human error and the "complex challenges associated with voluminous material" for not releasing the information to the police ombudsman (PONI) and has apologised.
However, SDLP Policing Board member Dolores Kelly, who met Acting Deputy Chief Constable Stephen Martin and Assistant Chief Constable George Clarke yesterday, said it wasn't an "isolated incident".
"The SDLP have made it very clear to the PSNI the reputational harm that has come from this recent scandal and the risk it poses to further damaging public confidence in policing here," she said.
"This incident also makes it very difficult to believe that there is not a hidden dead hand of the security services in the organisation."
The party will be will table "a motion to the Policing Board to set up an inquiry into this matter".
A Sinn Féin contingent, including president Mary Lou McDonald and northern leader Michelle O'Neill, also met police commanders, and later a number of the affected families at a community centre close to the scene of the 1992 Sean Graham bookmakers shootings on Ormeau Road.
Mrs McDonald's assessment of police was scathing.
"We have made absolutely clear to the PSNI that they have zero credibility in their dealing with legacy cases," she said.
"We have made it clear to the PSNI that their very cynical strategy and policy of withholding information or selectively disclosing some information and holding back the rest is entirely cynical, it's entirely unacceptable and it has dealt another blow to confidence in policing.
"But, more importantly, it has confirmed for very many families who have been waiting almost a lifetime in some cases, it has confirmed again that the policing authority in this state is not capable and not willing to act in an honourable, in a truthful and I would say in a fully democratic fashion when it comes to telling the truth."
Among the reports affected is Operation Greenwich into 20 murders and attempted murders across several counties between 1988 and 1994, the infamous 1993 Greysteel, Co Derry shootings in the Rising Sun Bar and a probe into the murder the same year of west Belfast teenager Damien Walsh.
Collusion is suspected in many of the murders.
