Sinn Féin today lost a legal bid to overturn financial sanctions imposed on it by the British government because of IRA activity.
The High Court in Belfast refused the party permission for a judicial review of the decision to penalise it more than £100,000 sterling last year.
Sinn Féin took the court action after the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, last April withdrew funding from its Assembly party.
He took action in the wake of a report from the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC)
highlighted the level of paramilitary activity by both the IRA and loyalists and recommended sanctions against Sinn Féin and the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party.
The IMC last week recommended further sanctions against Sinn Féin because of its knowledge and sanctioning of a £26.5 million sterling Northern Bank robbery before Christmas - believed to have been carried out by the IRA.
Rejecting the application, Mr Justice Weatherup dismissed a Sinn Féin assertion that the IMC had no right to examine their activities. The judge said Mr Murphy had been entitled to draw conclusions from the report from the IMC that accused the IRA of being behind the attempted abduction of dissident republican Bobby Tohill from a Belfast bar last February.
The judge also ruled the IMC was within its terms of reference when it recommended sanctions against Sinn Féin. And he said Sinn Féin could not claim procedural unfairness when they had not been prepared to talk to the IMC. Costs were awarded against Sinn Féin.
Outside the court, senior Sinn Féin member Mr Gerry Kelly branded the ruling political and said the IMC was outside the Belfast Agreement.