The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment says it has received verbal assurances from computer multinational Hewlett-Packard that it is not exporting software for use in the nuclear arms industry.
However, a Department spokesman said yesterday it was awaiting a written response from the company, following a newspaper report earlier this week.
The Galway Alliance Against War is seeking further clarification from the company's plant in Ballybrit, Galway, and staged a peaceful protest outside its premises on Thursday night.
The Department's licensing section wrote to the company earlier this week, seeking clarification on the precise nature of software produced by the company's subsidiary operation in Galway. This followed a report in the Examiner newspaper.
A Department spokesman said it had been informed verbally that the product at the centre of controversy was of general application. The software had a "whole variety of uses" in high-capacity computing, such as weather forecasting, and did not require an export licence, the company had argued.
In a separate statement, Hewlett-Packard said its subsidiary was "assisting the Department of Enterprise fully with any queries they have".
However, the Galway Alliance Against War group says it has good reason to believe the software is for use by French and US nuclear weapons programmes. "We understand that this technology is of fairly limited and specific application," its spokesman Mr John Cunningham, said.
"The manufacture of such components in Ireland flies in the face of Ireland's 40-year-long opposition to nuclear weapons and our identity as a neutral State.
"In the Galway context, it contravenes a resolution passed by Galway Corporation in the 1980s making our city a nuclear-free zone," added Mr Cunningham. "If software for nuclear weapons is being developed here, official State policy will be shown to be utterly hypocritical."
The group has urged the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and Galway West TD, Mr Ó Cuív, to "urgently raise" the matter at Government level. It has also called on the Mayor of Galway, Cllr Val Hanley, to intervene. "It is the mayor's duty to ensure the city's nuclear-free status is not being breached by any company or individual," it says.
Hewlett-Packard took over the Galway plant last May and has received more than €8 million in State aid through the IDA.