Ministers on both sides of the Border today condemned a suspected dissident republican bomb attack outside a PSNI station in Co Armagh.
A man and an elderly woman were injured in the explosion in Newtownhamilton last night.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said the entire island of Ireland is against the dissidents.
“They need sectarian hate to fuel their campaign. No republican can support such people. They offer only division and violence,” the Minister said.
“As was clear from my meeting with (Northern Ireland justice) minister David Ford and the police chiefs last week, the PSNI and Garda Siochána are united in their determination to thwart these people. The people of Ireland stand with their police services in their efforts.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said the attack was reckless and senseless. “Those who carry out such acts and seek to justify them in the name of the Republic are wrong and misguided. The only viable road to unity on this island lies through peace, tolerance, persuasion and agreement,” Mr Martin said.
“Violence and coercion serve no purpose in modern Ireland other than to delay reconciliation.”
Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness also condemned the attack.
“I would like to make it clear to the people who perpetrated this attack that their actions will not stop Northern Ireland from continuing on the road of peace," Mr Robinson said. "This is an evil and cowardly attack by people who have nothing to offer but murder and mayhem”.
Mr McGuinness said all parties, despite their differences, are united in support of peacefully working together for the greater good. "That is the only way forward," he said. "Whoever carried this out offer nothing but hardship, division and pain. We cannot allow them to define our future. They will not break the will of the community."
In a joint statement, the Church of Ireland's Archbishop Alan Harper and the Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh Gerard Clifford said last night’s bombing was a “futile attempt to drag us back to a conflict that people on both sides of the Border have intentionally and definitively left behind for ever".
The bishops said a “small, secretive coteries of dissidents” will not deflect people from continuing the journey towards a peaceful and reconciled society.
"We call upon all political representatives and electoral candidates in Northern Ireland at this time to stand together in solidarity with the people of Newtownhamilton and the PSNI and to reaffirm a cross-community commitment to the primacy of the ballot box as the only legitimate way of determining the future for all citizens,” they said.