Former RUC chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan has told the Omagh Bombing Inquiry that he regretted a 2001 press conference remark in which he said he would publicly commit suicide if criticisms of the force's investigation were true.

He described the comment as crass and insensitive, and said he apologised at the time, at the start of the inquiry, and again on Monday. He said too many police families had been affected by suicide and that he was ashamed if he had caused hurt to bereaved families.

The inquiry, chaired by Lord Turnbull, is sitting in Belfast and is examining whether the August 1998 bombing could have been prevented by UK authorities. The Real IRA car bomb in Omagh killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins.

Flanagan was questioned about the 2001 report by former police ombudsman Baroness Nuala O'Loan into the original RUC investigation. O'Loan had told the inquiry that Flanagan said her report could destroy the peace process. Flanagan rejected that account, saying he never felt that and would not have said it.

He also rejected a suggestion that the police investigation had not kept faith with his commitment to leave no stone unturned. He said he had open lines of communication with the senior investigating officer and that no request for additional resources had been made to him.

The inquiry was shown RUC logs indicating that the senior investigating officer decided to reduce the manpower and hours of the incident room in the month after the bombing. Flanagan said he had not been aware of that decision, nor of further reductions recorded in November 1998.

Questioned about notes from a 2001 meeting in which Chief Superintendent Sam Kincaid was recorded as describing staff resourcing as indefensible, Flanagan said he disagreed very much with that assessment.

Counsel to the inquiry Paul Greaney said the inquiry legal team had written to the Irish Government seeking clarity about an anonymous call to Finner army camp in County Donegal on 14 August 1998, the day before the bombing, which mentioned Omagh. He said the sergeant who took the call did not report it upwards before the attack, and that the inquiry was confident the Irish Government would answer its questions.