"There will always be bad characters who find themselves outside the community," Mr Alex Maskey, the Sinn Fein Assembly member for West Belfast, said yesterday.
He said his party was opposed to so-called "punishment" attacks and would continue to call for them to cease.
Mr Maskey said it "remained to be seen" if IRA punishment attacks would continue at the high level of the last week, and stressed that people were using the issue to suit their own political agenda.
IRA paramilitary-style attacks appeared to cease last November when, in the later stages of the Mitchell review, Sinn Fein pledged it was "totally opposed" to them. However, last Friday night a 30-year-old man became the first recent victim of such an attack in a republican area. "A lot of work continues to be done in the community to create alternatives and people should keep these things in perspective," said Mr Maskey.
Mr Maskey said that on occasion he had worked to prevent youths from being expelled from the community. "I can see the suffering. But sometimes I have advised people to go, to give a bit of breathing space between them and the community."
Mr David Adams, a senior member of the Ulster Democratic Party, the political wing of the UDA/UFF, yesterday said he was totally opposed to the attacks but stressed "there is only so much a person like me can do to stop them" Since last September, loyalists have been blamed for 77 beatings and 24 paramilitary-style shootings. Blame has been attributed to republicans for 14 beatings and five shootings.
Mr Adams said: "I can't stalk the streets of Northern Ireland trying to stop punishment attacks. All I can do is say things in private."
UUP leader Mr David Trimble yesterday said renewed "punishment" attacks in nationalist areas were a "serious" signal of republican disengagement from the peace process.
Speaking in Washington, Mr Trimble stressed the attacks had ceased during the short-lived devolved administration at Stormont. The Alliance Chief Whip, Mr David Ford, said he was worried by a recent report in a local republican newspaper that the IRA was "to all intents and purposes back on the beat" as an alternative police to the RUC.
"It is important that Sinn Fein doesn't just state its opposition to such actions, but uses its influence to bring them to an end. Sinn Fein is supposed to be the political leader of the republican movement. In a democracy the politicians give orders to the generals, not the other way round," he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Vincent McKenna of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau, has said the IRA is using the attacks to "blood new recruits".
He said yesterday a near victim of an attack in west Belfast this week later reported that the gun pointed at him had jammed. "The squad leader took the gun and showed the young gunman how to clear the barrel but it jammed again and the gang made off," added Mr McKenna.