The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has said a pattern of criminal activity by the IRA in the Republic which he complained about this year has now ended. Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent, reports.
Last March, Mr McDowell said he had intelligence information that senior republican figures were involved in "serious and ongoing" crime in Dublin Port.
Crime in the port had been organised by senior figures in the Provisional movement in the past "and very recently as well", he said.
He said this involved the organisation of robberies and "criminal heists" and that individuals involved in such acts, who had then been found by the IRA to be "freelancing", had been brought north of the Border and subjected to so-called punishment attacks.
He said yesterday on the Sunday Supplement programme on Today FM that this type of activity had now halted, and had not recurred since he highlighted it.
Government sources said earlier this year that the Government had raised this activity with the Sinn Féin leadership before Mr McDowell raised it publicly, and that this had led to a decline in such action.