Governments are wary of commenting overmuch on IRA statements, though they are carefully noted. The IRA has never been a negotiating partner for governments or for political parties, and there is no desire to confer on a private army the status of interlocutor.
While parts of such statements may be crystal clear, key sentences are often cryptic, and open to varying interpretations. "Keep the enemy guessing" maximises the impact. Generally, with important exceptions like ceasefire statements, or ones choreographed as part of a broad agreement, they are rarely very informative and can be quite restrictive in tone, written in the expectation that those who receive them like tablets from on high will be content with crumbs of comfort, on the basis that things could be worse.
They conform strictly to the republican version of history, and remain within an ideological mind-set that part-preceded the Good Friday agreement, to which the IRA was never party.
They give few hostages to fortune, but play a powerful role in fortifying the mystique of the IRA, like the oracle of Delphi, leaving people in awe of the power of the gods. The angry second statement on Thursday, sounding more like the Phantom of the Opera, warned of unspecified consequences for not taking the first one sufficiently seriously, and making a mess of the peace process. It seemed to assume that the governments should be shocked, intimidated and impressed by such statements and start dancing to their tune.
To maintain perspective, it is important to remind ourselves of the gains of the peace process. It was expressed very succinctly in an email I received on Wednesday from the Delhi Peace Group in India, which studies comparative conflict resolution. It began: "Despite frequent crises and its current ailing state, the Northern Ireland peace process is one of the most successful examples of the new directions a partition-related peace process can take. Incidences of violence are so infrequent as to cause a storm of protest when they do occur; Britain and Ireland are partners in peace."
Minister of State Noel Treacy, in Wednesday's Seanad debate, hours before the first IRA statement, reminded us of the many changes brought about by the Good Friday agreement which have enhanced democracy, including North-South co-operation, the new Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Human Rights Commission, and reforms in the criminal justice system.
The IRA statement comes after weeks of intense pressure on the republican movement not experienced since the ceasefires, following the Northern Bank raid, now denounced by Martin McGuinness as carried out by people who didn't care a damn for the peace process. That robbery, attributed by both governments and police forces to the IRA, has put up in lights the whole question of continued illegal IRA activity in any shape or form, already an issue in December's talks breakdown.
Ten years into the peace process, we should not need to be still analysing IRA statements. The IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries should be gone from the scene. What is remarkable about Sinn Féin speeches and comments is that they systematically bypass the incompatibility of the IRA and other paramilitary organisations with an exclusive commitment to democratic and peaceful means, which Sinn Féin has repeatedly signed up to, and is a condition of holding power.
There is an overwhelming consensus throughout Ireland that wants to see unchallenged democracy, the rule of law and human rights. No other party in Ireland can call in a paramilitary group to underline in menacing tones the retrograde nature of political developments or the seriousness of the situation. The fundamental cause of the present crisis is that the republican movement's twin-track approach has run out of road.
Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness deserve credit for considerable statesmanship in helping to bring the peace process as far as it has come. It would be churlish to deny the IRA and other now mainly peaceful paramilitary organisations credit for maintaining a high level of discipline in their ceasefires. But it is long past time for definitive closure. If the conflict is over, in which many lost their lives or served long prison sentences, for what was, in part at least, for many of them idealistic reasons, what is it doing to the reputation of the republican movement to be now associated mainly with robberies, smuggling and extortion rackets, and physical mutilation of juveniles in flagrant breach of human rights and all progressive thinking against corporal punishment?
The IRA statement reminds us of the "humiliation" demanded by Paisley in terms of publishing photographs of decommissioned weapons. Dan Breen, a fearless republican, did not hesitate in 1927 to lead the way in signing the piece of paper with a "humiliating" oath, in order to take a seat in Dáil Éireann, ahead of and temporarily separated from his Fianna Fáil colleagues, helping to precipitate an end to the main republican boycott of Free State institutions and open the road to power. Fianna Fáil never looked back, or regretted it.
The Government's commitment to inclusive implementation of the Good Friday agreement will not waver. Serious negotiations will resume, when republicans indicate, or others judge, that they are ready for closure. It came quite near last December.
The republican movement should not lose sight of the objective of a united Ireland, which cannot be forced or coerced. As Archbishop Eames once expressed the position of the Protestant and unionist people of Northern Ireland at an IRA victim's funeral: "The determination not to be forced into solutions to our problems at the point of a gun or in a bomb blitz is stronger than ever."
The only possible route to rebuilding trust and creating a positive experience of deeper co-operation is by working the Good Friday agreement, with the IRA having ceased activity. The republican movement should not be tempted by transient anger or unrealistic expectations to throw overboard all that has been achieved. Crises can be catalysts for positive change.