No place in society for terrorists who '˜sanction brutal murders': Robinson

The DUP MP was commenting after Chief Constable George Hamilton said he believed the structures of the Provisional IRA remained in place.

In a BBC television debate on Wednesday night, Mr Hamilton said it was his current assessment that “the IRA still exists but not for a terrorist purpose,” with the organisation providing “communication within the broader republican movement, or keeping the so-called ‘volunteers’ on board with the peace process”.

Mr Hamilton added: “Our assessment hasn’t changed since 2015.”

A joint PSNI and MI5 report in 2015 concluded that: “The structures of PIRA remain in existence in a much reduced form,” and that PIRA members believe the army council “oversees” both PIRA and Sinn Fein.

Mr Robinson said: “The chief constable is well placed with the facts on existing criminal activity in Northern Ireland. It is deeply disturbing to consider that the army council still pulls the strings in the background of republicanism.

“Paramilitary organisations cannot continue to exist in Northern Ireland. There is no place for them in society. No one wants terrorist activity in their neighbourhoods.”

Mr Robinson added: “There is no place for an IRA army council or any other army council in 2018. Whether it is to sanction the brutal murder and clinical clean up of Paul Quinn or Kevin McGuigan.”

Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann has questioned whether the current Sinn Fein leadership is “prepared to disassociate themselves from the IRA army council?”.

He said: “The fact that the chief constable says that nothing has changed since the 2015 report on paramilitary groups has implications for Mary Lou McDonald as the new president of Sinn Fein.

“Who is dictating the terms for Sinn Fein’s return to Stormont – Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill or the shadowy figures on the IRA’s army council who directed one of the most ruthless terrorist killing machines in the world?”

Jim Allister of the TUV described the chief constable’s comments as “hardly surprising,” but said they raise “a number of profound questions for the PSNI and unionists who would contemplate entering any power-sharing arrangement which includes Sinn Fein/IRA”.

SDLP MLA Dolores Kelly said: “Mary Lou McDonald must make it clear that any existing structures must disband and disappear.”

Sinn Fein said the “IRA is gone and not coming back,” and added: “There is no place for the actions of any illegal or armed groups in our society either republican dissidents or loyalists. It’s extraordinary that the focus today should be on an organisation that has long left the stage and not the active loyalist paramilitaries who still engage in electoral pacts and cooperation with mainstream unionist parties despite their involvement in extortion, prostitution, drug-dealing ... and murder.”

2015 report on paramilitary activity

Following the murder of Kevin McGuigan in 2015, a joint PSNI and MI5 report revealed that the Provisional IRA’s Army Council remained in existence – and that its members believed the IRA effectively controlled Sinn Fein.

During a televised debate on Wednesday, Chief Constable George Hamilton said: “Our assessment hasn’t changed since 2015.”

Mr McGuigan, a former IRA prisoner, was gunned down outside his home in the Short Strand area of Belfast in August 2015.

Detectives believed the killing was a revenge attack for the murder of former IRA leader Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison’ in the city three months earlier.

At the time the chief constable said: “Some current Provisional IRA and former members continue to engage in a range of criminal activity and occasional violence in the interest of personal gain or personal agendas.”

However, Mr Hamilton said the PSNI had no information to suggest that “violence as seen in the murder of Kevin McGuigan” was “sanctioned or directed at a senior level” in the republican movement.

A subsequent government-directed investigation into paramilitary activity led to the PSNI and MI5 concluding that the republican movement’s strategy had a “wholly political focus”.

The October 2015 report states: “The structures of PIRA remain in existence in a much reduced form.

“This includes a senior leadership, the ‘Provisional Army Council’ (PAC) and some ‘departments’ with specific responsibilities.

“The group took part in decommissioning between 2001 and 2005 but continues to have access to some weapons.

“Individual PIRA members remain involved in criminal activity, such as large scale smuggling, and there have been isolated incidents of violence, including murders.”

The government report adds: “A small number are involved in the storage of remaining weaponry to in order to prevent its loss to DRs (dissident republicans).

“The group is not involved in targeting or conducting terrorist attacks against the state or its representatives.”