Mark Brennock, Political Correspondent, assesses the confidential Government briefing document on Northern Ireland which was inadvertently released this week
The Northern Ireland security services, British and Irish Ministers and the North's politicians all accept that IRA members are still active. They are variously believed to be involved in some forms of training, occasional actions which breach the ceasefire and "targeting".
It could not be clearer that this is the British view. If the British did not believe elements of the IRA were active, Mr Blair would not have come to Belfast just two months ago to call on them to stop.
However, the statement in an Irish Civil Service briefing document that this is indeed the view of the NIO has led Mr David Trimble to take his party out of the talks in the North. After the document accidentally found its way into the hands of the media at a meeting at Farmleigh this week, Mr Trimble said he had had enough.
He wrote to the Taoiseach and British Prime Minister: "In light of these recent revelations, which clearly are the shared view of Her Majesty's Government and the Irish Government, I must await your proposals for responding to these latest breaches of the republican ceasefire." It is doubtful if many talks participants see these as "recent revelations".
Whether the IRA is actively recruiting members is disputed. The disclosed document, according to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, merely observed this was the Northern Ireland Office's assessment of the situation.
According to the report on UTV, the paper says the IRA's activities were "precautionary" rather than a preparation for a resumption of war; the IRA was no threat to the ceasefire; and this comparatively low-level activity may indeed serve a useful function in preventing younger Republicans from "leaching" away to dissident groups whose actions are far from "precautionary".
The paper also outlined the political context in which this IRA activity is taking place. The Republican leadership is entirely committed to the peace process, it says. It appears willing to put its support behind any deal that it feels it can persuade an ardfheis to accept. In other words, the document suggests, it is doing what a good political leadership should do: it is trying to lead its people. And in this instance it is trying to lead them away from violence and fully into the political process.
This analysis - that the Sinn Féin leadership is genuinely committed to a political road rather than simply covering up a continuation of the Armalite and ballot box strategy - has become more widely accepted as the political process has moved on.
Unionists remain justifiably suspicious of it, requiring a very high level of proof from an organisation that killed, injured, destroyed property and contributed enormously to the poisoning of society in Northern Ireland over 30 years. All this was done in the name of destroying the Union whose maintenance was the unionists' raison d'être.
But senior Ulster Unionists must be at least open to the idea that the Republican leadership is as the document says it is and has been working hard, with considerable success, to keep a dangerous movement together as it leads it away from the behaviour it knew best for three decades.
Mr Trimble has displayed pragmatism and courage over the past few years. He, too, has led a movement - often with the support of the narrowest of majorities - to accept they must be in Government with Sinn Féin.
But this week the other point in the document that has caused a stir does not seem unreasonable. The statement that the UUP is "internally dysfunctional" in its approach to the talks involved an unfortunate choice of language. But a party deeply divided and whose leader has to fight constantly to retain majority support cannot quibble with this description. Indeed Mr Trimble hasn't made an issue of it.
The document could have described the republican movement as deeply dysfunctional as well. An organisation whose leadership wants to serve in the Executive with unionist politicians, while at the same time some of its members may have those politicians' names on hit lists, deserves the description, too.
This week also backed up the doubts expressed in the document over whether the UUP was in the mood to sell a deal to its membership and supporters right now. The party may be so fixated on the impending electoral threat from the DUP that it does not believe it can be seen to compromise in any way.
Mr Trimble has faced down countless challenges and has now walked out of the talks over "revelations" that do not appear startling. The Israeli writer Amos Oz once said that his fellow countrymen were presented at each election with a choice between voting for their hopes or their fears. They voted for their hopes for a peace deal with the Palestinians when they elected Ehud Barak. They voted with their fears of Palestinian violence when they chose Ariel Sharon.
It appears that this week the UUP sees little short-term hope of achieving a deal that it can sell to the unionist electorate in May. By taking a hard line and pulling out of talks it may hope that the DUP will not attract all those unionists voting with their fears of being outmanoeuvred by Republicans. This is exactly the concern expressed in the disclosed document.
The publication of the document has not revealed any shocking secret analysis. What it has done is outline the simplicity, and intractability, of the problem.