FIVE MEN have been arrested in Co Louth during an ongoing Garda operation targeting dissident republican activities.
Two men are being held in Dundalk, two in Drogheda and another in Balbriggan under Section 30 of the Offences against the State Act.
The five were travelling in three cars when they were stopped and detained overnight, it emerged on Saturday.
The vehicles seized in the operation are being forensically examined, and gardaí searched a number of premises in Co Louth in the operation.
Despite initial reports, a Garda source dismissed reports the men were carrying explosives into the North or that shots were fired during the incident in the Omeath area.
“There were no explosives,” he said. “We fired no shots, and there is no evidence of shots being fired at us.”
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said he was briefed by Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy on the operation. “I congratulated the gardaí on their work and their professionalism in at times difficult circumstances,” he said.
“I continue to take the threat from dissidents very seriously and we are working closely with the security services in the North. The gardaí and the Police Service of Northern Ireland are working very closely together, as is evidenced by what unfolded in the last 24 hours.”
Mr Ahern met his Stormont counterpart Justice Minister David Ford last Friday at Carlingford, Co Louth, near where last night’s incident unfolded.
They held talks about cross-Border policing co-operation and a crackdown on cross-Border criminality.
In May, the report of the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) said dissident republican paramilitary groups remained highly active and dangerous but were still politically “marginal”.
The IMC had said in its previous report, its 22nd, that the dissident threat was at its highest level since the monitoring body first met in late 2003 and that threat had not diminished in the current six-month period under review to February this year.
IMC member Joe Brosnan said the Real IRA was responsible for most of the dissident violence.
Reporting in May, the IMC said the Continuity IRA, which murdered PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll in Craigavon, Co Armagh in March last year, also remained a “major threat”, although it is not as active as the Real IRA.
