All right. As Americans say, let's have a reality check here: who actually believes that the IRA has surrendered all its guns? I mean all of them, without exception.
Who believes there are no IRA weapons whatever in Ardoyne, in the Bone, in Clonard, in The Tunnel in Portadown, in Suffolk, in Poleglass? I could go on, but I won't. We'll just settle for those areas, if you please: who genuinely believes that the IRA has no armed presence in any of them? Because anyone who does will certainly give me an interest-free loan.
What? You sir, you do? Well, there's no point in asking you for money, because you're a penniless Redemptorist. Ah - another hand up at the back.
Stand up please. Hmm. I'll not waste my time tapping you for money, because you're a nice Methodist minister, and men of that particular cloth are as poor as a bumblebee in a confessional. A third hand. Quite. The Canadian who has been having the retirement from hell; and well sir, ruthless though I am, I haven't got the heart to bilk you of your soldier's life's savings.
But does anyone else in the room actually believe that the IRA is now a totally disarmed organisation? Anyone? Because if you do, then you'll surely lend me €1 million, against the security of a piece of string, an old bottle of ketchup, some elegant toenail clippings, and some Smarties I found in my pocket dating from 1992. Please. Hands up. Where are you? What? Is there absolutely no one who genuinely believes the IRA is 100 per cent disarmed?
OK, since you're all clearly not in the business of saying yes to any old question, maybe you'll consider doing this. Contact your local Sinn Féin TD or councillor and ask them to which army they're loyal. To the one true Army of this Republic, whose commanding officer is our elected President, or to some other army. And if it is to some other army, is it an unarmed army, such as the Salvation Army, or is it an armed army? And then ask: to which category does the IRA genuinely belong? If you get the answer that the IRA is a totally unarmed army - why, it hasn't even got a rusting halberd or a blunt assegai - then hold the Shinner's gaze for a full minute, to see if they can stop themselves from bursting out laughing.
A rude question. What happened to the Florida guns? What about all the Russian AN-94 two-shot automatic sniper-rifles? What happened to all those other weapons we don't know about, but which the IRA imported during the ceasefire, just as trees photosynthesised, seas had tides and Friesians produced milk?
To be sure, the entire organisation has gone into freeze-dried mode at the moment, and the next IMC report will no doubt show that the IRA is evident only through its absence. Recruiting has stopped, targeting has stopped, training has stopped. Lo and behold: where is the IRA? All gone? No, not all gone, but simply motionless, its DNA intact as it slumbers in deep hibernation.
It has no desire to start a war again - but neither has it a desire to cease to be the IRA. Moreover, it has parallel IRAs which are pretenders to the military title and to the mantle of Guardian of the Republic. So the Provisional IRA minds its remaining guns as confirmation of its apostolic succession from 1916.
This is not like the Workers' Party and Democratic Left, which not merely forsook the gun, but over time forsook the entire republican witchcraft which underlay it. To be sure, for a while, they continued the macabre and incomprehensible dance with Soviet-style communism, but in time they rid themselves of that - and in due course became among the most courageous and insightful critics of a Provisional fascism they knew all too well.
Is Sinn Féin not doing the same? Really? So why did the Provisionals flaunt their armed credentials through the streets of Dublin two weekends ago, if not to remind us of their real nature, their core identity? Thus, three-and-half thousand lives on, tens of thousands maimed, billions in wealth squandered, and the IRA stages a little comic pseudo-armed public charivari, a burlesque with toy Kalashikovs, to remind the people what fun it has all been.
To be sure, massive IRA decommissioning certainly occurred, and it was historic, because it represented the formal, conspicuous end to the 25-year war. But more than that. It also confirms that the IRA leadership wants the impossible, to live within the two traditions: the one created by the men of 1916, The Armed and Visionary Road To Nowhere, and the Redmondite one they rejected, The Will of the People, only for this to be resurrected by the Free State Goverment.
The defining moment for Fianna Fáil came 10 years later when the serial killer and newly elected TD Dan Breen gleefully assembled a Thompson submachine gun in a telephone kiosk in Leinster House, just in case Cosgrave did not freely surrender power.
But he did, so Breen (reluctantly) and de Valera (with relief) put away the gun forever. Sinn Féin has not had that kiosk moment, and qua Sinn Féin, never can, because it is defined by its association with the IRA. Without the pike in the thatch, it would merely be a 32-county SDLP with attitude and a good tailor. And we all know Sinn Féin is much, much more serious than that.