The Minister for Justce Michael McDowell criticised the provisional movement by saying they were closer to Mugabe than Mandela.
Speaking during a Private Members debate on the death of Robert McCartney in the Dail tonight the minsiter said "the greatest Provo deceit which has been swallowed by a minority of media commentators is the suggestion that IRA thuggery and criminality is the sole responsibility of the IRA and that Sinn Fein is some separate democratic chrysalis seeking to break out of a paramilitary cocoon and to become an exclusively peaceful and democratic butterfly".
"The truth is more Mugabe than Mandela," he added.
Mr McDowell also said "torture and mutilation are part of the Provo stock-in-trade. And the threat of murder drives many, if not all, of their base criminal activities".
"The Provisional movement is a single entity which terms itself the Republican movement. It has a single leadership. The entire movement including Sinn Fein - regards that leadership as the authentic source of political legitimacy on this island," Mr McDowell said.
"The public are beginning to see the shape of the threat to democracy posed by a movement which uses crime on a massive scale to engage in politics," the Minister said.
He also warned that "what is on view is but the tip of an iceberg".
Mr McDowell also said the struggle of Robert McCartney's family to bring his killers to justice "compounds the naked evil of his murder".
By any standards, "the killing of Robert McCartney was a cruel and horrific murder perpetrated by a gang of brutal cowards," he added.