GARDAI are attempting to ascertain if last month's bombing of a Protestant-owned hotel in Co Fermanagh was the work of a new republican paramilitary group or IRA members using a cover name.
A group describing itself as "the Irish Republican Army under the direction of the Continuity Army Council" claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Killyhevlin Hotel in a statement sent to newspapers at the weekend.
The group was first described in reports in the January edition of Saoirse, the monthly newspaper issued by Republican Sinn Fein, which is led by Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh. RSF denied Garda reports that it had formed a paramilitary group known as the Irish National Republican Army.
But in January the group calling itself the Continuity Army Council emerged in statements vowing to carry out attacks aimed at the British presence in Northern Ireland.
Garda sources have indicated that a paramilitary element associated with RSF may have as its leading members a middle-aged man from the south-west and a Dublin woman.
The Garda Special Branch monitored the group closely and in October last year a bomb similar to the one used in the Killyhevlin attack was intercepted at Inniskeen, Co Monaghan.
There were indications, however, that the bomb discovered last year and the one used on the Killyhevlin Hotel were similar to bombs constructed by the IRA, according to Garda sources.
The Inniskeen and Fermanagh bombers chose all-terrain, four-wheel-drive vehicles to transport the bombs because they have strengthened suspensions which disguise the fact that they are laden with large amounts of home-made explosive.
The Killyhevlin vehicle was stolen in Dublin earlier in the summer and driven through a Garda anti-smuggling checkpoint at Redhills, Co Cavan, 10 days before the attack.
Later it was abandoned just inside Northern Ireland, where it remained for several days before disappearing again. It was fitted with false Roscommon number plates.
It is understood the RUC did not approach the vehicle immediately because of fears that it might be booby-trapped and because of the pressure on personnel resources resulting from the loyalist protests of mid-July.
In the weekend statement it was claimed the bombing was carried out in retaliation for the death of Dermot McShane, the former Irish National Liberation Army member who was knocked down and killed by a police Land-Rover during rioting in Derry on July 13th.
It added: "Military action will continue to be taken against British occupation in Ireland until such time as the British government withdraws finally from our country."