The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has accused Sinn Féin and the IRA of lying about criminal activity when it suits them, saying there was no reason to disbelieve that the IRA had carried out the Northern Bank robbery.
Mr McDowell said the moment of truth had now arrived for what he called the Provisional leadership. There was no room in the democratic institutions of the Republic of Ireland or the North for those who could not or would not operate independently of the IRA army council, he said.
Mr McDowell said senior Sinn Féin figures who play a senior role in the IRA were responsible for IRA violence, kidnapping, exiling and torture. "This responsibility must also apply to the recent Northern Bank robbery."
The Minister said he had no reason to disbelieve the PSNI Chief Constable, Mr Hugh Orde, when he said he believed the IRA had carried out the robbery. He contrasted the statement from Mr Orde - "a level-headed, professional and honest policeman" - with Sinn Féin's insistence that IRA denials should be accepted unquestioningly.
He said Sinn Féin and the IRA "have lied repeatedly about criminality when it suited them". They had initially denied the Enniskillen bombing, the importation of weapons from Cuba a year after the Belfast Agreement was signed, and having a representative in Cuba when asked about the arrest in Colombia of their representative in Cuba, Mr Niall Connolly.
He quoted a past statement of Mr Adams: "The IRA has denied any involvement and I accept that . . . Crimes like this can play no part in the republican struggle and those who are seeking to blame Sinn Féin know this."
But he pointed out: "The Sinn Féin president wasn't speaking of the Northern Bank robbery when he uttered those words. He spoke those words in June 1996 after a gang of IRA men killed Garda Jerry McCabe while robbing a post office van in Adare, Co Limerick."
He said these words underlined and re-echoed Mr Adams's recent theme that IRA members do not commit crimes. "Note also that those who attributed blame to the Provos for that vicious crime are, as usual, themselves accused of bad faith. The constant implication is that they are hostile to the peace process.
"Now reconcile his claim that such crimes can play no part in the republican struggle with the nauseating posed photographs by Sinn Féin's TDs with the McCabe killers and their publication in the Sinn Féin newspaper."
He then quoted Mr Adams's strikingly similar comments about the Northern Bank raid: "The IRA has said it wasn't involved. I believe that to be the case."
The Minister said: "Does any sane person believe that the IRA or Sinn Féin would now acknowledge that it had carried out the Northern Bank robbery?"
He contrasted the credibility he said attached to Mr Orde's statement with the lack of credibility he suggested attached to Sinn Féin and the IRA.
"The degree of trust which he has earned contrasts completely with the gross degradation of trust by those who criticise him most and who now impugn his motivation."
He challenged Mr Martin McGuinness's statement this week that "Gerry Adams and I work on the basis that you can't tell lies within the peace process. If you tell lies you get caught out and then irreparable damage is done".
But, he went on, Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness "have made a career in the peace process of overpromising and underdelivering".
He said they had told Mr George Mitchell and Mr David Trimble in 1999 that IRA decommissioning would happen after the Northern Ireland Executive was first set up - by January 30th, 2000 - but it didn't.
"In early 2003, the Irish Government was led to believe that it was the intention of the Provisionals to hold the requisite army conventions to end IRA paramilitarism." This hadn't happened.
"The massive untruth at the heart of Sinn Féin is that it claims to operate as an organisation wholly separate from the IRA. In fact, as the Taoiseach has said repeatedly, Sinn Féin and the IRA are two sides of one coin.
"The Independent Monitoring Commission concluded that there was an overlap at senior leadership level between the IRA and Sinn Féin.
"That confirmed what I had previously said about the presence of household names on the army council," he said.
"It follows that the senior Sinn Féin figures who play a senior role in the IRA are responsible for the pattern of violence, kidnapping, exiling and torture which the IMC is satisfied are under the control of the IRA's most senior leadership.
"This responsibility must also apply to the recent Northern Bank robbery."
He said Sinn Féin and the IRA were not republican and that Irish people, North and South, must stand up to "the deceptions, deceits, propaganda and stratagems of the Provisional movement.
"There is no room for the army council in Ireland's future".