Many of the 297 contract police officers who are to leave the force when their contracts expire will be “absorbed” back into the police through new hiring initiatives, the justice ministry said on Thursday.

In a written response to Wednesday’s House legal committee meeting, in which MPs had expressed their disappointment that the officers’ contracts expired without any means of retaining them in the force, the ministry stressed that this was the only outcome possible in line with the law on such hires.

It pointed out that the law allows for contracted special police officers to be hired on fixed terms for a period of 18 months with the possibility of an extension for a further 10 months, but with those 28 months now up, there is no legal possibility for further extensions.

It added that at the time of their hiring, they were brought into the force “to be able to cover immediate needs for immigration issues, explicitly excluding any contract renewal beyond the total duration of 28 months”.

This, it said, was “something of which the officers themselves were aware before they were recruited”.

It then said that both police trade unions and parliament were aware that this was the case, before ending its statement by saying that “based on the latest recruitment efforts within the police force … a significant number of these officers will be absorbed”.

On Wednesday, House legal committee deputy chairwoman and Disy MP Fotini Tsidirou had described the officers’ dismissal as “unacceptable”, saying that over the course of their contracts, they had “acquired experienced and had been trained and were very valuable for the safety of the country”.

She had criticised the justice ministry’s “rigid stance” and said it should have found a way to “utilise the experience of those people”.