'IRA still involved in criminal activities'

It is too early to say if the IRA will be given a clean bill of health by January, the Independent Monitoring Commission said today.

The four-member independent body pointed out that much criminality has been scaled down but paramilitary activities such as exiling were still being carried out.

IMC member Dick Kerr said that the IRA’s July 28 pledge to disarm was potentially very significant but it was too early to make an informed assessment on whether it would become a purely political body by next year.

He told a Dublin news conference: “It’s too early to make more than a limited assessment although the initial signs are encouraging.

“We’re talking about a very limited amount of time and that time has not allowed us to reflect on the whole range of activities. “

IMC member and former Northern Ireland Assembly speaker Lord Alderdice cautioned against the term “clean bill of health” being used and said that activities like exiling were still being carried out.

“I’ve cautioned people against the use of the term ‘clean bill of health’,” he said. “I’m a doctor and I genuinely think it is ill-advised to give anybody a clean bill of health because they sometimes go straight out the door and collapse on you.

“We will monitor things and give the evidence as we see it and others must then make their judgment on what that means for the future.”

On the issue of exiling, Lord Alderdice said: “There is not evidence that this has been set aside.”

He said that some media reports of the IMC’s 60-page dossier had said that the IRA’s criminal activity had stopped.

“That is not what we have said,” he added.

The four-man commission, made up of ex-CIA deputy director Richard Kerr, former Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner John Grieve, retired Irish civil servant Joe Brosnan and former Northern Ireland Assembly Speaker Lord Alderdice, has been attacked in the past for not being independent.

But Mr Grieve insisted there was no influence being exerted on them from either the British and Irish governments.

“I feel under absolutely no political pressure at all. I feel under pressure to myself to get as much evidence as possible and to prepare the best possible report,” Mr Grieve said.

“I never have and do not now feel myself to be under any political pressure from anybody.”

Lord Alderdice noted the difference of opinion on whether the Progressive Unionist Party and Sinn Féin should have their parliamentary expenses returned.

“There clearly is a divergence of position between the reports that we have made and the positions that the British government has adopted.

“It certainly raises questions about those people who believe that we were not independent because quite clearly we have said things that come out of our following of the evidence.

“As far as we are concerned, we will follow it and we will put out in the public domain what we find. Governments make decisions on the basis of their political judgment and that is entirely for them to do.”

Mr Kerr said that in the past it had been suggested that if the government did not follow their recommendations, the IMC appeared to have a dent in its armour.

“If we were seen as all of our recommendations were taken by the government, we would be seen as kind of the patsy of the government. In some ways, you can’t win either way,” Mr Kerr said.

Mr Brosnan added: “If the government were recommending every last iota of every recommendation that the Commission was making, we would probably be accused of being tools of the government.”