Reports quoting republican sources in the past few days seem to confirm earlier Irish Times reports that the IRA has decided to allow Sinn Fein representatives take seats in the new Stormont assembly.
The change in IRA policy was reportedly taken at an IRA convention somewhere in Northern Ireland. The timing of the reports, a few days before Sinn Fein's reconvened ardfheis, could not have come at a better time to help Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness sell the idea to their party.
Decisions to change the "general army orders", which form the Provisional IRA's constitution and rule book, can be taken only at what are termed general army conventions.
The IRA constitution states that, when it is convened, the general army convention "shall be the supreme army authority".
There is a good deal of confusion about these affairs. The last publicly acknowledged convention was in 1986. Up to three conventions are believed to have taken place between the 1994 ceasefire and late last year to discuss strategy and whether the ceasefire should be continued. However, these meetings were never confirmed as proper conventions.
If reports of the latest convention decision are correct, it places it - in historical terms - alongside the 1969 general army convention. At that meeting the group which became known as the Official IRA adopted a very similar policy of ceasefire and opting into Northern structures. The group which became the Provisional IRA broke away and embarked on the campaign of violence which resulted in the Provisionals killing around 2,000 people since then.
Conventions are meetings of between 100 and 200 people. They adopt rule changes and select a 12-member IRA "executive" which, in turn, selects the seven-member "army council" which is then responsible for conducting war, or otherwise.
The general army orders are contained in the "Green Book", which sets out the IRA's objectives and means by which it can attain its stated aim of a "32-County Socialist Republic."
The Green Book edition produced around the end of the 1970s, after members of the Northern Command of the IRA had assumed political and military control of the movement, is quite strident in its language against "partitionist" institutions in both the "26 counties" (the Republic) and the "six counties" (Northern Ireland).
The preamble states that the IRA leadership is the "lawful government of the Irish Republic". In effect the movement never recognised Dail Eireann as constituted since 1922, never mind Stormont.
The non-recognition of the Dail was dropped in 1986 by the IRA to allow Sinn Fein to participate in general elections in the Republic. It now has one TD, Mr Caoimhghin O Caolain, in Cavan-Monaghan.
The 1986 decision to participate in Dail elections led to the breakaway by a small group led by the former Sinn Fein president, Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh, who formed the small political group, Republican Sinn Fein (RSF). Subsequently, a small paramilitary group, the Continuity IRA, emerged in support of RSF.
Recognition of a Northern assembly, however, was never considered until now.
The Green Book states that "parliaments or assemblies claiming the right to speak for and to pass laws on behalf of the Irish people are illegal assemblies, puppet governments of a foreign power and willing tools of an occupying force.
"Volunteers must firmly believe without doubt and without reservation that as members of the Irish Republican Army, all orders issued by the army authority and all actions directed by the army authority are the legal orders and the lawful actions of the government of the Irish Republic.
"This is one of the most important mainstays of the republican movement, the firm belief that all operations and actions directed by the [IRA] army are, in effect, the lawful and legal actions of the government of all the Irish people."
The preamble also contains references to "corrupt illegal assemblies."
General Order No 1 states: "A volunteer shall not (a) swear allegiance or recognition to the partition institutions of government of the six or 26 counties; (b) swear or pledge recognition of their legitimacy as sovereign governing bodies for the Irish people; (c) swear or pledge himself in any way to refrain from using arms or other methods of struggle to overthrow British rule in Ireland."
The "maximum penalty" set out in the book for breaching this order is "dismissal" - other rule breaches outlined in the general order book merit the penalty of "execution".
The proposal to drop the abstentionist position on a Northern Ireland assembly has been criticised by members of the Provisional republican movement and has led an unknown number of IRA and Sinn Fein members to quit.
Some of these figures, led by a Dundalk man, have been responsible for the spate of attempted bomb attacks since last autumn.