A SERIES of IRA meetings at local level is believed to have taken place during October and these culminated in a meeting of senior figures, possibly in Co Mayo at the start of this month, gardai believe.
While it has been difficult to interpret what exactly went on during the meetings, there were hopes that this process would precede a renewal of the IRA ceasefire.
An almost identical process preceded the August 1994 IRA ceasefire. Then there was also a round of meetings of IRA members at local level. A large meeting of IRA figures took place in July, 1994 at about the same time as Sinn Fein held a conference in Letterkenny Co Donegal, to discuss the political ramifications of a ceasefire.
The IRA meeting in July, 1994 was not an IRA general army convention and, it is understood the meeting which took place at the start of this month was also not a general convention but an informal though important affair.
Gardai believe that the outcome of the latest meeting might have been a decision to have laid down conditions, through intermediaries, about a return for Sinn Fein to the political talks process.
One source recently said it was believed the IRA had set a deadline for its conditions to be met. If its conditions were not met then there would be a return to the type of attacks on security forces and other targets in Northern Ireland which the IRA has, until now, held back from.
The discovery yesterday that the IRA was preparing to attack a security force patrol in Derry and recent arms and explosives finds in Donegal and Louth tend to support the view that the IRA was preparing for a return to a widespread campaign of violence in the North.
Yesterday's discovery of a launch site for a horizontal mortar, at Groarty Road, north west of Derry city, would indicate that the IRA was preparing to launch an attack in the near future, possibly within the week.
The RUC found a hole dug into a ditch running along the roadside and detonating wire in place nearby. The intention was apparently for an IRA unit, situated on high ground above the road, to fire the horizontal mortar into a security force vehicle as it passed along the road.
These horizontal mortars were introduced by the IRA in the North in 1991 and were used to kill five members of the security forces. The device contains a charge of Semtex explosive and is capable of perforating armoured vehicles. It is particularly associated with the north west area. The first two victims were killed in Co Derry. The first four unfired horizontal mortars discovered by gardai were found outside Letterkenny in December, 1993.
Yesterday's discovery comes after the recent Garda arms finds in Derry and Louth, all of which indicated that the IRA was preparing for a return to wider activity in the North. The devices found all suggest a return of guerrilla warfare tactics along the Border.
Devices found by gardai at Ballinaby, north of Dundalk in Co Louth, indicated that the IRA was preparing to carry out booby trap bombings most probably on security force bases along the Border.
The concern is that the Border IRA units, having used the period since the ceasefire to gather intelligence on potential targets, are now preparing their arms and equipment to carry out attacks.