Monitors to issue report on £26.6m bank heist

Harry McGee, Political Editor

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern met the four members of the IMC in Dublin yesterday at their request. He was told that the body had already started its inquiry process into “recent matters” in the North and would complete its report by Friday.

The Taoiseach also dismissed a report carried in the Sunday Independent that the IRA was preparing to return to war.

Mr Ahern indicated there was no basis for the article: “I have no such information,” he said.

Referring to yesterday’s meeting, Mr Ahern said it was comprehensive and detailed. “The IMC informed me that it is their intention to complete a preliminary report on recent matters by the end of this week.”

He said the Irish and British governments hoped to be in a position to publish the report sometime next week.

The IMC is not due to publish its half-yearly report assessing current levels of paramilitary, and related criminal, activity until April. However, in the light of the political controversy after the Northern Bank raid, it decided to prepare a preliminary report that would give its assessment on what paramilitary group, if any, was responsible for the robbery and examine the four documented cases of punishment shootings since early December.

If the findings of the IMC report are adverse to Sinn Féin, the party could be fined or sanctioned by the British Government.

However, the Taoiseach again reiterated yesterday that he did not favour the “politics of exclusion”.

Mr Ahern will talk to British prime minister Tony Blair today to set out a programme for the Northern process to take it up to the British elections in May.

The IMC’s last report last April was surprisingly hard-hitting. Its central claim was that some senior members of Sinn Féin are also senior members of the Provisional IRA.

It also threatened to name those people in its autumn report. In the event, that did not occur, partly due to the detrimental effect it may have had on peace talks.

SF objected to the setting up of the IMC in 2003, saying that it was solely at the behest of unionist parties.