Sinn Féin President Mr Gerry Adams insisted today his party's election campaign was not funded by criminal activity by the Provisional IRA.
Speaking on RTÉ radio in response to attacks from the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, Mr Adams said he could say "without fear of contradiction" that no money raised by the IRA had been used to fund the party election campaigns for the local and European elections.
Mr McDowell had said the gardaí had regularly reported to him the involvement of the IRA in serious crimes.
"There is massive sustained crime in the Dublin area and it is organised by senior officers within the IRA army structure," Mr McDowell said. "We have clear evidence that when things go wrong with their criminal plans, senior members of the IRA intervene to put things right and to make threats to people involved in those events.
"I don't believe there is any doubt whatsoever but that the IRA are organising very significant crime on both sides of the border." He insisted he was "not bashing Sinn Féin" but "pointing out the truth" and "dealing in facts, not opinion."
"I am pointing to what is exactly happening on the ground. There is an abundance of evidence. Why is it that time and time again, no Sinn Fein person will ever condemn, criticise or distance themselves from any activity of the IRA?" said Mr McDowell. "The answer lies in the fact that they all believe and are required to believe as a condition of their membership of the Republican movement that the decisions and actions of the Army authority of the IRA are the decisions of the legitimite holders of the powers of Government of the Irish people, on behalf of the Irish Republic, that's what they believe."
He added that the killers of Garda Gerry McCabe would only be released "if the IRA and Sinn Féin were to end the paramilitarism and to publicly bring it to an end".
However, Mr Adams said: "If the IRA is really as bad as he says why on earth doesn't he do his job and take anybody involved in crime into the whole criminal process?"
He described the minister's claims as "smoke screening" and insisted Sinn Féin was not a "subservient branch" of the IRA.
"I have been looking at the material that's been circulated in relation to the local elections and I believe that I couldn't run an equivalent campaign for one tenth of that amount," Mr McDowell, the deputy leader of the Progressive Democrats party said. "The public claim that their campaign is being run on the basis of €2,000 per candidate doesn't stack up."
Mr Adams rejected this, saying Sinn Féin had always been open about its expenditure.
"I, as the party leader of Sinn Féin and others have been forward, we have opened our accounts. The PDs don't do this," he told Morning Ireland. "We have opened our accounts, we have brought journalists in to look at the accounts."
Mr Adams was challenged by Mr McDowell to prove his party's local election candidates had not exceeded the maximum budget for election expenses of €2,000. Mr McDowell said he found it difficult to accept Sinn Féin candidates could mount their extensive campaigns within these budgetary constraints.