The IRA may still be active a decade after its public disbandment, a senior Northern Ireland official has said.
The remark prompted a flat denial from a senior figure in Sinn Féin, whose position as part of the North’s power-sharing government is predicated on the dissolution of its former armed wing.
An end to the IRA was a central plank of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement aimed at ending three decades of violence in the North between Catholics and Protestants.
Northern Ireland Justice Minister David Ford, from the Alliance Party, said police had told him the murder of former IRA member Kevin McGuigan in Belfast on August 12th may have involved other members of the paramilitary.
"They were talking about people who are or were members of the Provisional IRA, so clearly there is a concern . . . that there may be current IRA members involved," Mr Ford told RTÉ.
“This is the first time in which the police have said clearly and openly the potential for the IRA still existing.”
However, Mr Ford said that the possibility was only a line of inquiry and police must be given time to establish the facts.
Detective Superintendent Kevin Geddes said in a statement that the PSNI had "no information to say at this stage whether this [killing] was sanctioned at a command level or not" by the IRA.
Arrests
Six people have been detained for questioning about the murder, including convicted IRA bomber Sean Kelly, who was jailed for involvement in the 1993 killing of nine Protestants in Belfast.
He was freed in 2000 under the Good Friday deal.
A 60-year-old man arrested on Friday by detectives from the Serious Crime Branch investigating the murder has been released unconditionally.
Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson said that if the IRA turned out to be still active, he might seek the removal of Sinn Féin from government.
“Republicans cannot be in the Executive in circumstances where this murder was the work of the Provisional IRA,” Mr Robinson said in a statement.
The IRA was known as the Provisional IRA from the 1970s until its disbandment in 2005.
Former IRA members have long been active in a number of smaller dissident militant groups that rejected the 1998 Good Friday accords, including groups using variants of the IRA name.
However, the continued existence of the main IRA group would raise questions about links to Sinn Féin.
It would also prove a big embarrassment for Sinn Féin in the Republic, where opinion polls indicate it will likely either be part of the next government or the largest opposition party after elections early next year.
Senior Sinn Féin politician and former IRA member Gerry Kelly denied on Friday that the IRA still existed.
“They have gone. Full Stop,” he told RTÉ.
Mr Kelly said international monitors confirmed in 2005 that the IRA had completely disarmed.
Reuters