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Northern Ireland Bill

The message is crystal clear; that they should close down their paramilitary activity and gangsterism and stop their criminality now, and not before time. The point I was trying to make—I will not be drawn further down this route—was that the people who join paramilitary groups claim to be doing so for honourable objectives, whether one agreed with them or not. Their methods were completely unacceptable, but at least they claimed a political motivation; that was my point. There is no longer any political motivation for any of that activity from loyalists or dissident republicans. I need to make some progress, or there will be even less time for other Members to make contributions. Following the publication of the eighth report of the IMC, much was made of the suggestion that not all weapons and ammunition had been handed over for decommissioning in September 2005. In that report, the IMC did not say that the PIRA leadership had in any way given instructions to retain arms. Today, the IMC says:"““Indeed our present assessment is that such arms as were reported to us as having been retained, were withheld under local control despite the instructions of the leadership””." The IMC continued:"““The relevant points are that the amount of un-surrendered material was not significant in comparison to what was decommissioned and that these reports do not cast doubt on the declared intention of the PIRA leadership to eschew terrorism and to follow the political path””." Much was also made of references to intelligence gathering in the eighth report, about which the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) was especially concerned. The 10th report says:"““While PIRA continues to receive information from members and sympathisers, we do not know of information being proactively sought. We are currently not aware of intelligence-related activity which is outside the aims of the July statement””." On criminality, the IMC report says that it has found signs that PIRA continues to seek to stop criminal activity by its members and to prevent them from engaging it. It continues:"““We believe that some senior PIRA members may be playing a key role in this””."