Both coalition partners in the Government said today that paramilitary groups must disband if further political progress is to be made in Northern Ireland.
In his addresses to the reconvened Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in Dublin Castle, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern insisted that the call for the disbanding of paramilitary groups was not merely a question of unionists demanding that the IRA disband.
"It is an error to believe that the demand for the rule of law and the probity due to democracy is an exclusively unionist ultimatum delivered to the IRA," Mr Ahern said.
For her part, the Tánaiste, Ms Mary Harney, said that while the IRA had held their ceasefire they had not gone far enough and disbanded.
"For that is to suggest that nationalists in Northern Ireland set a threshold of acceptable behaviour to tolerate or accommodate punishment beatings and other unlawful activity associated with paramilitary activity.
" . . .There is no doubt in my mind that nationalists, no less than unionists, want to see the transition from violence to exclusively peaceful and democratic means being brought to completion and all paramilitary groups becoming a thing of the past."
Ms Harney called on all sides to reaffirm their commitment to democratic processes and said the overwhelming vote in favour of Belfast Agreement in 1998 precluded the existence of any paramilitary force on either side of the Border.
"The Irish people did not vote for the continued existence for the IRA on a permanent basis as a private army under the control of a self-appointed leadership," she said.
"They voted to reaffirm the fundamental principle that democratic government alone may excise co-ercive power . . .
"The absence of violence and the presence of democracy is not an aspiration. Because of our vote in May 1998 it is a mandate. . ."
Both party leaders, however, were optimistic that Belfast Agreement institutions would be sustained and that all elements of it would be implemented.
Mr Ahern insisted the Agreement had been durable despite the series of knocks it had taken during its implementation.
While it had been stalled from time to time, he said, it had never gone backwards.
"We may be in a stall now," Mr Ahern said, "but I am convinced that it is temporary."
The process, he said, needed to move on from the lurching stop-start of the last few years to effective and assured functioning.
"The moment has arrived to achieve that," he said.
"I believe the will and the means are there to do it.
"And I believe it can be done so as to ensure that the institutions are restored in good time before the May Assembly elections."