Sinn Fein negotiators claim there are no "organic" connections between the party and the IRA, and therefore there is no basis for expelling the party from the talks process.
Some Sinn Fein negotiators have never had any connections with the "physical force" side of the Provisional republican movement, but some have been prominently associated with the IRA in the past.
The backgrounds of some of the Sinn Fein negotiating figures include:
Gerry Adams
Mr Adams was a member of the first Provisional IRA delegation to hold negotiations with British government representatives. He was released from the Long Kesh internment camp in July 1972 to join a delegation of IRA figures, including the Belfast IRA leader, Seamus Twomey, Provisional Army Council members, Daithi O Connaill and Sean Mac Stiofain. In a forward to a published tribute to Mr Twomey, who was chief of staff of the IRA during the mid-1970s, Mr Adams said their lives were "intertwined". Seamus Twomey was responsible for reorganising the IRA. A document found by gardai in a house at Royal Terrace, Dun Laoghaire, where Twomey was staying in 1977, outlined the need to build and develop Sinn Fein as part of the overall republican "struggle". Twomey stipulated that the political wing should remain under the control of the IRA.
Martin McGuinness
Mr McGuinness appeared at several Provisional IRA press conferences in the early 1970s and took part along with Gerry Adams in the 1972 delegation which met the British government. He is reputed to have become leader of the IRA in Derry at the age of 22. He was arrested and imprisoned at the Curragh detention camp in the early 1970s but was never imprisoned in the North. He headed the secret negotiations with the British civil servant which preceded the 1994 ceasefire.
Gerry Kelly
Mr Kelly was arrested with six other IRA members after exploding bombs at the Old Bailey in London in March, 1973 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He and three others prisoners undertook a prolonged hunger strike in 1974 and were force-fed for 206 days before giving up after another IRA prisoner, Michael Gaughan, died. Mr Kelly was later transferred to the Maze Prison outside Belfast, from which he escaped in 1983. He was later arrested in an Amsterdam flat, close to a container packed with weapons ready for transport to Ireland. He was returned to prison in the North and released three years ago.
Martin Ferris
Until his release from Portlaoise Prison four years ago, Mr Ferris was the "OC" - officer commanding - of the IRA wing in the prison. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for his part in the attempt to smuggle six tonnes of weapons into the State from the US in 1984. The weapons were seized by gardai and the Naval Service off Kerry after they stopped a trawler, the Marita Ann. Mr Ferris, who was described as the head of the IRA in the southwest area, was one of a number of men arrested on board the trawler.
Pat Doherty
The Sinn Fein representative from north Donegal has no convictions, North or South, for IRA membership or related offences. His brother, Hugh, was one of the IRA team known as the Balcombe Street Gang, arrested after a series of IRA killings in England in the early 1970s. Pat Doherty has been a strong supporter of the Adams/McGuinness policies and he backed their decisions favouring the increased politicisation of the Provisional republican movement. He was widely criticised in 1996 after he refused, during an RTE television programme, to condemn the IRA's murder of Garda Jerry McCabe.
Caoimghin O Caoilain
A purely political republican figure, he became the first Sinn Fein TD to be elected since 1981. He topped the poll in Monaghan in last summer's general election and is one of the group of Independents and minority parties which supports the present minority Government of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats. He left salaried employment with a bank in the mid1980s to work full-time for the party. His electoral support in Monaghan is such that it is possible the party might bring in a second candidate at the next election.
Rita O'Hare
Ms O'Hare has not played a part in the Stormont talks but has been prominently involved in previous negotiations and meetings in the Republic. She is still, officially, on the wanted list in Northern Ireland for the shooting and injuring of a British soldier in west Belfast in 1971. In the mid-1970s, she was arrested while trying to smuggle three ounces of plastic explosive into Portlaoise Prison. She was sentenced to four years imprisonment.
Siobhan O'Hanlon
One of the negotiating team at Stormont since the outset of the process, and a close associate of Gerry Adams, Ms O'Hanlon was convicted of firearms and explosives charges in the mid-1980s after the RUC raided a house in the Newington area of north Belfast and discovered an IRA bomb factory. She is a nephew of the famous Belfast republican, Joe Cahill and a former close friend of IRA woman Mairead Farrell, who was shot dead by the British army in Gibraltar in 1988.