McDowell confirms getting latest IMC report

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell confirmed today he has received the latest report from the North's Independent Monitoring…

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell confirmed today he has received the latest report from the North's Independent Monitoring Commission.

The tenth report from the commission assesses the state of current paramilitary ceasefires.

Mr McDowell said arrangements were being made for consideration of the report by the Government before laying it before the Houses of the Oireachtas.

A spokesman said the Department expected to publish the report next Wednesday.

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The report comes in the wake of a PSNI investigation into an alleged dissident republican bomb factory in Co Armagh.

Four men were arrested on Wednesday after more than 100 kilos of fertiliser-based homemade explosives were recovered at a car-breaker's yard in Lurgan.

The last IMC report - published in early last month - claimed the IRA no longer posed a "terrorist threat" and had taken a strategic decision to follow a political path.

It said any "illegal activity which may be engaged in by the organisation or its members is mainly of a kind to be addressed by the police without need for military assistance".

The four-member commission said the most serious paramilitary threat to British security forces came from dissident republicans.