The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, welcomed Bishop Seamus Hegarty's offer to accept arms to overcome the decommissioning problem. "I think that anything that he or his fellow church leaders in Northern Ireland can do is always helpful." The North's Minister of Education, Mr Martin McGuinness, of Sinn Fein, said he was encouraged that such ideas were being explored.
"We, as people who are very close to this process of conflict resolution, are obviously heartened by the fact that there are people out there who are thinking about this problem and difficulty that faces us all," he said.
The UUP anti-agreement MP Mr Jeffrey Donaldson said decommissioning must involve the destruction of weapons. "What we are talking about here is the bishop taking possession of arms, and holding on to those arms, and they are not destroyed - that would be outside the terms of the decommissioning Act and would not be proper decommissioning," he told BBC Radio Ulster.
The Minister of Finance, Mr Mark Durkan, of the SDLP, criticised Mr Donaldson's response. The bishop was offering a possible solution to the decommissioning crisis while others were "trying to add to the problems".
The North's Minister of Agriculture, Ms Brid Rodgers, of the SDLP, said the bishop's intervention was both welcome and courageous. "I would welcome Bishop Hegarty's intervention. I think it is a very genuine attempt to help to achieve what the people want, which is the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement."
Ulster Unionist Party senior negotiator, Mr Dermot Nesbitt, said people should wait and see what unfolded from Bishop Hegarty's statement.
"Let us just see what unfolds but we are very clear from a unionist point of view that government cannot be sustained without knowing that that threat of violence is over and that process is by the method of decommissioning," he said. The DUP security spokesman, Mr Gregory Campbell, said he suspected the proposal was designed to give the appearance that decommissioning was taking place, "when we all know the reality that that is not the case".
The Alliance leader, Mr Sean Neeson, welcoming the proposal, said: "It is very important that if any arms are decommissioned they must be verified by Gen. de Chastelain."
Mr Patrick Roche of the Northern Ireland Unionist Party said Dr Hegarty's offer was "politically and morally unacceptable".
Meanwhile, the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Fahey, described Bishop Hegarty's proposal as possibly "the last throw of the dice". "I suppose if you want to call it the last throw of the dice - yes. We are at the point where we've got to get either movement or unfortunately we're going to take a very retrograde step," said Mr Fahey.