Evidence contained in yesterday's Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) report on IRA activity is as good as it gets in terms of proving the organisation’s campaign of violence is over, PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde said today.
Mr Orde said barring someone from the provisional movement actually standing up and declaring the IRA no longer existed, the assessment by the IMC provided the most compelling proof to date.
Mr Orde told a Policing Board meeting in Belfast there was no evidence that the IRA army council continued to meet and he said it presented no threat to people in the region.
“I think the IMC report is pretty unequivocal,” he said.
“There is no intelligence and I have no intelligence that they [the army council] are meeting and the world moves on.
“I think the IMC’s assessment is a very fair and very accurate description of where that organisation currently is.
“In the absence of someone standing up and saying it’s gone away this is good as we’re going to see.”
He said the threat of republican violence came only from dissident groups such as the Real IRA.
The Democratic Unionist party has insisted the IRA’s army council must be wound up before it agreed to devolve policing and justice powers to Stormont.
Yesterday’s report by the IMC said the paramilitary organisation had effectively ceased to exist. However senior DUP figures have said they still need more proof the provisional movement can never return to the scene.
PA