When first asked to become a member of the Policing Board, Fermanagh South Tyrone MLA, Sean Lynch, thought about his past and the journey, as he says, “from prison to the policing board”.

Mr. Lynch spent 12 years of a 25 year prison sentence for possession of explosives and a rifle after he was shot by the SAS while planning an ambush of a British Army patrol in 1986 before being released under the term of the Good Friday Agreement in October 1998.

Some might see the conflict in Mr. Lynch being a member of the Policing Board, but he dismisses this.

“If somebody had said to me 20 years ago this is where you’d be it’s like anything else, it can’t be foreseen,” says Mr. Lynch.

“There is absolutely no contradictions as I see it because this is the direction of travel of the peace process and the building of a new, shared society.

“It charters the role someone like myself, coming from my past and through prison.

“I thought of it when I was first asked to go on, from prison to the Policing Board.That journey is about building a new society for the future generations, a safe society and representative and that’s the challenge.”

He said taking on the significant and important role was a measure of how far society had moved forward.

Mr. Lynch said he is there to hold senior policing figures to account and restore confidence in a police force, especially in the Nationalist community.

In his first meeting last week he raised the issue of the ongoing investigations into historical child abuse in Fermanagh directly with Chief Constable Simon Byrne asking for an update and where the investigation was going.

In response the Chief Constable said 46 cases were currently being investigated and the slow pace of the investigation was not down to a lack of resolve on the part of the PSNI.

Last week, Sinn Féin deputy leader Michelle O’Neill and fellow Policing Board member, Gerry Kelly, were the first party members to attend a recruitment event for the PSNI and Mr. Lynch believes it is a major step and says anybody from the Nationalist community who wants to have a career in policing should be supported in doing so.

“If young people from the Nationalist community want a career in policing then they should be encouraged and supported.

“If they want to go down that road who are we to say don’t when we are asking for there to be a representative policing service?”

Mr. Lynch also described the threats issued to Ms. O’Neill and Mr. Kelly following their attendance from Dissident Republican as “deplorable”.

“These are two people who have families, who have spent their lives building a peace process and shaping a better future for all and I think in this day age is it absolutely deplorable.”

Mr. Lynch says he wants to see “a better future in for the younger generations” and in his last mandate as an MLA in Stormont he knows there is a lot of work to be done.

However, he says “he is looking forward to the challenges ahead” now that power-sharing has returned following a three year stalemate.