Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has played down the importance of any finding in the Independent Monitoring Commission report to be published tomorrow that the IRA is still involved in criminality.
Sinn Féin has stepped up its condemnation of the IMC ahead of its eighth report into paramilitary activity and criminality.The party claimed the ceasefire watchdog's membership and reports were "politically loaded, discriminatory" and worked "to subvert the democratic rights of the electorate".
The IMC is expected to confirm a broadly positive outlook on current levels of activity by illegal groups, despite continuing IRA involvement in intelligence-gathering and crime. The report will be published amid new signs that the UDA and UVF are considering their future activities following last summer's move by the IRA. The British and Irish governments are already looking to the next IMC report in April hoping for a "cleaner" report which will enable the British prime minister and the Taoiseach to press the DUP into dealing with republicans.
"The IMC made it quite clear publicly that it would probably never be able to give a clean bill of health," said Dermot Ahern, who was attending an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.
"You can't expect that when you turn on a light that everything will be rosy in the garden. It would be naive to think that you can do that after 35 years of violence."
Asked to clarify what level of IRA criminality was acceptable, Mr Ahern said criminality that was not aligned with the political process, and not in any way connected to the ideals of the IRA, was a matter for the security forces to deal with.
A well-placed Irish source has suggested to The Irish Times that Tony Blair's contacts with the DUP leadership in particular will prove crucial in the next few weeks. Multi-party talks involving the two governments are scheduled to begin next Monday.
The Rev Ian Paisley has already stated that a political deal to re-establish the Executive at Stormont is not likely for the foreseeable future.
However, if Sinn Féin moves closer to acceptance of the PSNI and the next IMC report confirms the IRA is sticking to its commitment made last July not to engage in any activity, Mr Blair will be better placed to press the leading unionist party to talk to Sinn Féin.
The two governments will hold discussions under the auspices of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference in London tomorrow morning.
The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said he had not seen the IMC report, but that he hoped it "will show that incrementally we've made progress across all areas since the last report in September." In relation to the issue of criminality, he said it was "more difficult" but in that things were "not as clear cut" because it was more difficult to establish whether those involved were still in the republican movement or acting on orders.
Tt would be "unfair to focus" on any specific finding on this issue at the the expense of an overall finding of significant progess. "From a Governmentt point of view we're not happy that anything at any level happens," he said. However, the Government was "sensible to know" that getting all activity to cease was part of a process, and that it would be very hard for the republican leadership to get all activities to cease immediately.They hoped to "move into intensive talks with the parties next week and then try to build on that up to the April period where we want to get substantive movement"