IRA has defied agreement - Bruton

The IRA's refusal to decommission weapons makes it "unthinkable" that politicians associated with it should sit at a cabinet table "in this or any other jurisdiction," the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, said.

Calling the IRA statement "a fundamental defiance" of the Belfast Agreement, Mr Bruton said the agreement and the structures set up by it had been designed to end the war in Northern Ireland. But, he added, "a cabinet minister with a private army at his back would not be on the same level as a cabinet minister with no private army."

"This is not a word game," Mr Bruton continued. "Words are the only tools available to democratic politicians to convey meaning. Refusal to say that the war is over means that the IRA reserves the right to use warfare to get its way, in defiance of the democratically expressed will of the people of Ireland, North and South."

The IRA's refusal was also a "calculated defiance" of the Republic's democratic authority, he said. "Under our Constitution, only bodies authorised by the Oireachtas are entitled to hold arms or maintain a private army. This is fundamental to any known concept of civic republicanism." The Labour Party spokesman on justice, Dr Pat Upton, said in the wake of its statement refusing to decommission, the republican movement should issue an "unambiguous declaration that the use or threat of violence has no place in the politics of the island".