McGuinness says focus on IRA 'silly'

The North's Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, last night dismissed as "silly" attempts to bring the IRA back into the spotlight.

Yesterday, the Irish and British governments revealed they have asked the International Monitoring Commission (IMC) to produce a special report clarifying the status and role of the IRA's army council.

The IMC was asked to draw up the report "on the future of the Provisional IRA" by Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward and the Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern last month before the Westminster recess.

But, speaking last night, Mr McGuinness said: "The IRA have clearly gone off the stage and have done so since 2005," said Mr McGuinness.

"But there's still attempts being made by some people to drag them back on and I think that's silly."

In a report issued on May 1st, the IMC said it believed that the IRA "was fully committed to pursuing the political path and that it would not be diverted from it". The body reported that it did not think the IRA was involved in terrorist or other illegal or criminal activity over a six-month review period.

However, the IMC concluded that members of the IRA were involved in the brutal killing of Paul Quinn on a remote Border farm last October, and that finding prompted renewed calls for the group’s army council to be dismantled.

Speaking at the annual West Belfast Talks Back event last night, Mr McGuinness also said that loyalists' failure to debate decommissioning was "rank hypocrisy".

Unionists were quick to focus on IRA weapons but need to turn their sights within their own community, the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister added.

Mr McGuinness was responding to Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) leader Dawn Purvis’s claim that there was no demand to hand over arms within her community, despite years of pressure for IRA decommissioning.

Mr McGuinness said: “That to me is rank hypocrisy.”

Ms Purvis’s party is aligned to the UVF which faces mounting Government warnings that the opportunity to destroy arms will not last forever.