A senior garda who has been involved in investigating terrorist activity since 1969 told the High Court yesterday that military activity did not stop after an IRA ceasefire of 1972.
Det Chief Supt Joseph Egan, a member of the Garda since 1964, said he had been involved in the surveillance and investigation of terrorist organisations in the State for 18 years.
When he started that work the IRA was an illegal organisation and was under surveillance. The organisation divided into two groups, the Provisionals and the Officials. Both were illegal and membership of the IRA under the 1939 Offences Against the State Act was a criminal offence.
The law did not differentiate between the Provisionals, Officials or any branch of the IRA. The IRA was the core group. There were ancillary subsections but this was pure semantics. "The IRA is the IRA as far as we are concerned," he said.
He agreed that from 1969 to 1972 the Official IRA was involved in paramilitary violence. Asked by Mr Michael McDowell SC, for the Sunday Independent, whether the Official IRA had become inactive following the 1972 ceasefire, he said they announced a ceasefire "but activity did not cease with that ceasefire".