BOTH security and paramilitary sources have recently expressed concern that a splinter republican group would mount attacks inside Northern Ireland. The group most likely to do this, it is widely felt in security circles, is the Continuity Army Council.
The CAC group is thought to be tiny, numbering only a few dozen people with a small amount of weapons but with the ability to make large bombs. Guns, detonators and small amounts of explosive can be bought on the Continent or smuggled in from the US, where the CAC is thought to have support.
Its name emerged earlier this, year in a statement issued to the Republican Sinn Fein newspaper Saoirse and to other newspapers.
The group says it has no organic links to Republican Sinn Fein (RSF) but agrees with its political stance.
Both RSF and CAC share the view that the British presence in Northern Ireland is the root of all political, and possibly other problems in Ireland, and that only an unconditional British withdrawal can resolve Ireland's problems.
They also adhere to the establishment of a 32 county socialist republic with a provincial parliamentary structure referred to in an RSF document called Eire Nua.
The Continuity Army Council group emerged just as the Provisional IRA called off its ceasefire and very little attention was paid to its existence by the media.
It is possible that the sudden need to switch police attention to the Provisionals after the ceasefire ended benefited the CAC. Previous actions involving the CAC group, including an attempted bombing in south Armagh in October 1995, were thwarted by gardai.
However, the group was able to mount a bomb attack on a Protestant owned hotel - which it described as an "economic target" - on July 13th, at the height of the Drumcree public order crisis in the North. The explosion wrecked the hotel, which was cleared of wedding guests with only minutes to spare.
Last month, in an interview with the American academic and authority on Irish republicanism J. Bowyer Bell, members of the CAC expressed apparent indifference to the possibility that their actions might precipitate a loyalist backlash in Northern Ireland.
Bowyer Bell said the group regarded the position of Provisional Republicanism - Sinn Fein and the IRA - as irrelevant and had "reached the conclusion that armed struggle was the only way forward and that their organisation had the means to pursue that struggle".
Despite denials by the RSF leadership that the party has a military wing, gardai believe the relationship between the political party and the Continuity Army Council is exactly the same type of symbiosis that exists between Sinn Fein and the IRA and between other paramilitary organisations and their political wings here.
Until earlier this year gardai agreed there was little connection between the Provisional IRA and the Continuity Army Council.
However, in recent weeks there have been reports of secret contacts between senior Provisional IRA elements in the Border area and RSF figures.
The Provisional IRA elements, reported to be involved in these contacts are known for their unremittingly hardline stance on the use of violence. Their views, and those expressed by the CAC in their interview with Bowyer Bell are almost identical.
Both elements reject the majority held position within Sinn Fein and the IRA in Northern Ireland that a renewal of all out conflict will achieve nothing other than a loyalist backlash and further bloodshed.
Garda sources report that there has been contact between a Provisional IRA figure in south Donegal and a man who would be suspected of holding a senior position in any military organisation associated with RSF.
There are strong suspicions in Border areas that the Provisional IRA figure is acting as an intermediary for the man believed to be the Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA.
This man, in his 50s and chronically ill from heart disease, is seen as being at the centre of the decision to call off the IRA ceasefire in February.
He is also now perceived as the main opponent of the mainly Northern based group which seeks to re establish an IRA ceasefire.
It may be that the emergence of the CAC, coinciding with signals from Northern republicans of a desire to return to a ceasefire, might mark the beginning of realignments within the Border and Southern republican constituency.