Decommissioning is not just of concern to unionists and must be undertaken by the paramilitaries as part of confidence-building, the Progressive Democrats leadership said at the launch of the party's campaign to have the Belfast Agreement endorsed on May 22nd.
Both the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, and the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell - director of the PD campaign - stressed the need for decommissioning as "an integral part of the agreement" during a press conference in Dublin yesterday.
According to Ms Harney, decommissioning is as much an integral part of the agreement as the release of prisoners. One cannot adopt an a la carte approach.
It is time, said Ms O'Donnell, for the paramilitaries to engage in confidence-building too. "The decommissioning of the paramilitary arsenal is an essential ingredient to persuade those who are sceptical about the capacity of the agreement to deliver peace."
Asked if she envisaged practical decommissioning, the Tanaiste said that was "understood".
However, Ms O'Donnell said that while both governments had put in place systems for decommissioning, it was more important to have a "at least a decommissioning of the mindset" in terms of reassuring people who were sceptical of the agreement's capacity to deliver peace.
"What people want to hear from paramilitaries and political parties representing paramilitaries is that the war is over, that they are committed in the future to walking the way of democracy with the rest of us," Ms O'Donnell said.
It was not only a question of handing over 20,000 guns, but a genuine commitment, spoken and declared by Sinn Fein and the other parties representing paramilitaries, that they had foresworn violence.
Ms Harney said a statement saying one was for the agreement but not for decommissioning "was certainly not the mindset we are talking about."
She continued: "The statement last week from the IRA was most unhelpful in that regard. What we want to see is a commitment to the political process . . . that people have fully subscribed to everything involved in this agreement. If they have, there is no need for them to have weapons of war."
In relation to the release of prisoners she said that, as a member of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Northern Ireland since the coalition took office last summer, she found that agreeing to the freeing of prisoners was among the most difficult decisions she had had to make.
Although she agreed to the release of people who committed "dreadful atrocities in the past," she was aware that it was her responsibility to show people that if they subscribed to constitutional politics, prisoner releases had to go "hand-in-hand with that."
If people continued to subscribe to the agreement, "over time" prisoners would be released. Every decision in government would have to be based on the best security advice at the time.
The killing of Det Garda Jerry McCabe had "nothing whatsoever to do with Northern Ireland or republicanism." It was a cold-blooded murder of an innocent man and an attempted murder of Garda Ben O'Sullivan, she said.
According to Ms O'Donnell, it would be unprecedented to discuss the release of persons who had not been tried or convicted. Discussion about that particular crime was always excluded from the remit during debate in the multi-party talks on prisoner releases.
"It is unwise to go down the road and discuss any element of that case. The matter is before the courts," she added.
The Tanaiste asked employers and unions to work for a "massive endorsement" of the agreement.
A high Yes vote and a low turnout on polling day would be an inadequate response.