The discovery of a pipe bomb in a car on Dublin's M50 motorway was despicable and sickening, the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said this evening.
Gardai are investigating if last night's incident at the West Link Toll Plaza is linked to the Continuity IRA.
Mr McDowell praised the work of the Gardai but refused to comment on the origin of the bomb or its intended target. Detectives believe dissident republicans may have been supplying the devise to a feuding criminal gang in south Dublin.
Mr McDowell said today: "It's despicable. Everybody involved in the dissident movement bears the blame for this. "I can't speak strongly enough in condemnation of the thugs and cowards who engage in this.
"To pretend they are a kind of army, that is the most sickening thing of all."
A section of the M50 motorway was sealed off for four hours last night while the Army Bomb Disposal team carried out a controlled explosion of the devise.
The 23-year-old driver of the vehicle and another 56-year-old man are being questioned at Clondalkin Garda Station under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act.
Mr McDowell said he believed the gardaí had a clear idea where the bomb was coming from and where it was going to. Praising the garda operation, he told reporters in Neilstown, Dublin:
"They really do deserve our highest praise for ensure that everything is done to combat this use of lethal violence."
Condemning dissident republicans, he added: "They are betraying the national flag and the term 'republican' by providing criminals with bombs. "We know where it was coming from in one sense. It was coming from a group of cowardly thugs who describe themselves as an army.
"And it was going to a group of equally cowardly thugs who are engaged in a turf war for the control of Dublin's drug trade."
The minister said the community at large was at risk from feuding criminal gangs. "Bombs are bombs and inevitably bystanders are going to get injured when this kind of violence gets employed," he explained.
Mr McDowell also warned drug users that they were fuelling the drugs trade and its violence. "The drugs trade inevitably falls into the hands of cowardly thugs like this who are vicious.
"Anybody who takes a joint, anybody who does a line of cocaine, anybody who uses an E tab, how do they think the trade is organised. "If you use drugs or if you allow anybody in your family to use drugs, you are choosing shootings and bombings."