The IRA is suspected of being responsible for the theft of more than 100 shotguns and sports rifles from an arms dealer in Athlone, Co Westmeath, on June 8th, according to sources close to the Garda investigation.
While IRA members have been arrested in recent years, none has been charged with serious offences since the murder of Det Garda Jerry McCabe in May 1996. Since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, the IRA has shot dead up to 13 people, mostly men involved in criminal activity.
It has also carried out a large number of assaults in Northern Ireland, and this activity is spreading to parts of the Republic. Gardai say they anticipate an increase in IRA "vigilante" activity before the general election in the Republic next year.
A five-man IRA gang is believed to have raided the home and business of Mr Jerry Scully, owner of the Guns and Tackle shop in Athlone. They threatened and tied him up with his wife and three children. The gang then stole the firearms and ammunition from the store.
Gardai admit to being puzzled about the robbery, at a time when the IRA is in negotiations with Gen John de Chastelain's independent international commission on decommissioning, and just before the latest round of negotiations on the North's political structures.
Gardai have suggested that the IRA is seeking "untraceable" weapons to use in assassinations and robberies. It is also thought that the organisation did not wish to try to import weapons while it was in sensitive negotiations over its arsenal of infantry weapons.
It was thought this was behind its decision to buy handguns and small automatic weapons in Florida in 1999. These handguns have been used in murders in the Republic and Northern Ireland in the past two years. It is not possible to identify a shotgun from ballistic examination of pellets in the way that bullets can provide evidence of the weapon used.
A shotgun and a handgun, so far untraceable, were used in the murder of the Dublin criminal figure, Seamus Hogan, in south Dublin two weeks ago. The IRA has not been ruled out as potential suspects. However, Hogan had a large number of enemies in the Dublin criminal world and had also been in dispute with the other republican terrorist group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
Gardai and the RUC have established that the IRA is also responsible for the largest theft of cigarettes ever in the Republic or Northern Ireland. On June 10th an armed gang of IRA members raided Belfast docks and escaped with cigarettes worth £4 million sterling from the Coastal Containers depot.
The gang filled four lorries with the haul, three of which were later abandoned in the Republic. According to senior Garda sources, the operation was overseen by a prominent IRA figure from west Belfast, who is believed to be its director of intelligence, and by the man known as the "officer commanding" the IRA in Dublin. This man lives in north inner Dublin.
The cigarettes were in cartons marked in French and German. It is suspected the IRA has access to a packaging plant which is being used to repackage the cigarettes in cartons with English writing.
There does not appear to be any major investigation into the IRA's involvement in cigarette smuggling, which is defrauding Northern Ireland and the Republic of large sums of tax.