SF leaders are incensed by implication they acted in bad faith, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Unlike the £26.5 million missing from the Northern Bank, the Northern peace process is locked up in one big vault from which right now and for many months ahead there is just no escape.
Outside the gates of Leinster House, the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, challenged the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, to throw him in jail, while up here in Belfast the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) insisted in the most unequivocal terms that the IRA robbed the bank and that some Sinn Féin leaders knew about it in advance.
The IMC members did not mention Mr Adams or Mr Martin McGuinness by name, but who else could they have been referring to? This explains the fury of Mr Adams in Dublin yesterday, who does anger very well, whether real of feigned.
The challenge is to limp through to the autumn, or next year, or whenever Mr Ahern and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, next have the time and energy to address seriously the rolling catastrophe that currently is the peace process.
Mr Adams keeps talking about the need to struggle beyond the Northern Bank robbery to the more productive tactic of tackling a political way forward.
That's all very well, but it seems patently obvious that to return to the process it is necessary to get the Northern Bank job off the agenda. And that's impossible at the moment.
It's just politics careering round and round and going nowhere. We must continue to endure our off-season pantomime politics. "Oh yes the IRA did it." "Oh no it didn't." "Oh yes Sinn Féin leaders knew about it." "Oh know we didn't." Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.
The British and Irish governments are holding to a simple argument: republicans got us into this mess, so therefore the next move is for republicans to get us out of it. In turn, Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness insist they can't unlock the vault on their own and need the assistance - or cover, it could be said - of the governments and the parties. And that, in any case, the DUP walked away from a deal in December.
In the meantime, let's see who has won most points in this latest bout in the credibility stakes. The IMC entered the ring yesterday to face Sinn Féin and the IRA.
Just like Hugh Orde, the Taoiseach, the Prime Minister and the Garda Commissioner, they fingered the IRA for the robbery. And, just like Mr Ahern, they said some Sinn Féin leaders knew in advance of the raid. The implication is clear: republicans acted in bad faith with the governments during the negotiations, the allegation that has cut deepest with Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness.
IMC press conferences tend to be rumbustious affairs, and such was the case yesterday in the Hilton Hotel, Belfast.
It seemed implicit in the IMC report that it was bringing Sinn Féiners such as Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness into the frame as joint members of Sinn Féin and the IRA. It also recommended what it admitted appeared "paltry" financial sanctions against Sinn Féin, while acknowledging that this would once again allow republicans to play the victimhood card.
But, no matter from what angle we threw the question, the IMC members present, Lord Alderdice, Mr Joe Brosnan, and Mr John Grieve, would not name names, notwithstanding previous indications that, to use our vulgar journalistic shorthand, they might "name and shame" Sinn Féin politicians they believed were in the IRA.
The members insisted that they weren't just cogging the "homework" of Mr Orde but reached their conclusions after consulting several sources. But they couldn't quite explain why, if they were so certain of their allegations, no one has yet been arrested. They had never come across such strong "material" to support their allegations, they said.
They also made reference to Sinn Féin and the IRA's rather Orwellian notion of when a crime is a crime. "Although we note Sinn Féin has said it is opposed to criminality of any kind it appears at times to have its own definition of what constitutes a crime." What they made clear is that they would not be played for patsies, to use another favourite term of Mr Adams: they believed and stood over their claims, with the former head of the Department of Justice, Mr Brosnan, saying it would be a resigning matter for him if the IMC's findings against Sinn Féin and the IRA turned out to be wrong.
The governments, the parties, the US administration and now the IMC have in the most explicit of terms stated they don't believe republicans, and are prepared to stakes their reputations and, for some, even their careers on their judgment.
Sinn Féin has defended itself creditably from such difficult corners before, and Mr Adams played a reasonable card yesterday by challenging the authorities to turf him in prison if they were so confident he was an accessory to the act.
A huge credibility battle is being fought, and, outside its tight constituency, is being lost by republicans. It will continue to be waged right through to the British general election expected in May.
Thereafter, the trick is to stumble through the summer marching season to September, when we will start hearing a mutter or two about politicians dusting themselves down and starting all over again.