Tuesday's Bloody Friday apology is part of a process where republicans seem to be coming to terms with their role in many of the worst atrocities of the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland, writes Jim Cusack, Security Editor
The IRA's qualified apology for Bloody Friday 30 years later follows an important event earlier this year in which a large social evening was held in a Dublin hotel to commemorate the IRA members killed during the Troubles. The event was seen by security figures as a defining moment in which the IRA was drawing a line under its past.
Another very significant development was the decision by Belfast's Sinn Féin Lord Mayor, Mr Alex Maskey, to honour the dead of the first World War by laying a wreath at the City Hall Cenotaph last month.
Both events had major significance for what was termed the Provisional Republican Movement - encompassing the military and political sides of the organisation. Mr Maskey's participation in the Remembrance ceremony has particular symbolic significance for republicans.
The republican leadership is now seen as firmly attached to the peace process a point that was underlined by the warm political response from Dublin and London to the Bloody Sunday apology.
Security sources on both sides of the Border report that the IRA even seems to be scaling down its punishment beatings and shootings. There have been a number of IRA punishment shootings in Belfast in recent months but the vigilantism in Kerry and Dublin have dropped off.
Senior security sources also say there is very little other noticeable activity such as arms training. Up to this year it had continued training members in firearms use. It was particularly training recruits in "close-quarter assassination" - shooting people dead at close range with handguns.
There have also been no recent reports of arms-smuggling.
The Provisional IRA is also seen as being very opposed to the activities of "dissidents" the "Real IRA", according to Garda sources. Some former Provisional IRA figures have been helping the Garda with information about the activities of the dissidents.
Given that it seemed to be moving away from its past, there was some surprise that it would decide to issue a statement drawing attention to its role in one of the worst atrocities in the history of the Troubles.
While the Blood Sunday tribunal and a spread of other inquiries have thrown light on the past actions of the British army and the RUC, the North's terrorist organisations including the IRA have, so far, successfully evaded examination of their role.
While there is no major pressure for an inquiry into the events of July 21st, 1972, in Belfast, it is believed that senior republican figures anticipate damaging revelations about Bloody Friday in at least one forthcoming book about the IRA. The apology is seen in some circles in Belfast as an attempt to pre-empt the revelations and as a damage-limitation exercise.
The IRA has previously apologised for killing civilians, as in the case of the Warrington bombing in which the two young boys died and for the Cenotaph bombing at Enniskillen in which 11 people were killed, but these apologies were contemporaneous and issued in the face of massive outrage. However, it has not previously apologised retrospectively for events such as Bloody Friday.
Unlike the IRA, the loyalists chose the event of their ceasefire to issue a blanket apology for their actions to their victims. The former UVF leader, Gusty Spence, spoke of his and his associate's "true remorse" for their past actions when he announced the formal loyalist ceasefire in October 1994.
Tuesday's statement was qualified. It stated that it was not the IRA's intention "to injure or kill non-combatants" on Bloody Friday.
In effect, the figures who led the military side of the "republican movement" are still having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that during the early 1970s, in particular, many were principally involved in bombing purely civilian targets around Northern Ireland, causing hundreds of civilian deaths and thousands of appalling injuries.
The most intense period of this campaign was in 1972, the worst year of the Troubles when 500 people were killed and thousands injured.
On March 4th, 1972, the IRA planted a bomb in the Abercorn Restaurant in Castle Lane, Belfast. The café was filled with women shoppers when the bomb in a shopping bag exploded without warning, killing two young women and injuring 70 people. Several of the injured lost limbs.
The IRA has still not admitted it was responsible.
On March 20th, another IRA bomb exploded without warning in Donegall Street, Belfast, killing eight people including two soldiers who were trying to usher people away from another suspected car bomb a short distance away.
A particular feature of the Donegall Street bombing was that people were fleeing from a hoax bomb scare when they ran into the real bomb. This was repeated on a much greater scale in the city centre on July 21st.
The prelude to July 1972 included the failed talks between the IRA leadership and the British government. During this period in the early summer, there was a decline in IRA bombing.
However, when the IRA demand for a British withdrawal was not met, the leadership issued orders for a heightened bombing campaign. Friday July 21st was designed to illustrate the power the IRA had to bring terror to the North's main city.
Orders for the Bloody Friday bombings came from the IRA's Belfast leader, Seamus Twomey from Andersonstown, who died some years ago.
Dozens, if not hundreds of IRA members in Belfast, were involved in the day's events from those who assembled the explosives, constructed the bombs and stole the cars used to carry them and for escapes and to scout the bombing routes and targets.
The month closed with another no-warning IRA car bombing in the village of Claudy, Co Derry. Nine people, all of whom the IRA would term "non-combatant" were killed.