TWO MEN were last night still being questioned by gardaí who believe they have prevented a major paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland.
Gardaí were last night given an additional 24 hours to question the younger man arrested on Saturday night.
He was taken before a District Court judge yesterday evening who granted the extension of time. It will expire this evening.
The older man remained in Garda custody last night and today a decision will be made on whether to make an application to extend his time.
The arrests followed a planned search of an outbuilding in the Mount Pleasant area of Dundalk, Co Louth, where the two men were found late on Saturday with a potentially significant explosive device.
It is believed that the device was about to be used in an imminent dissident republican bombing.
The men’s detention is continuing as the British and Irish governments are preparing to release the latest report by their paramilitary watchdog.
The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) will release details of its findings in Belfast tomorrow.
It is expected to underscore the severity of the threat posed by dissident republican groups.
Yesterday, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said the threat from dissident republicans has been assessed as “substantial” by the IMC.
Speaking about the Garda operation which foiled the construction of a suspected Real IRA bomb in a shed near Dundalk, Mr Ahern said he believed what was being planned was, “going to be a major bomb somewhere”.
He said the way it was disguised illustrated that it “clearly it was to be put either at a roadside or a building to try and do as much damage as possible maybe to some of the security services.”
Gardaí found two 6ft long cylinders that had been modified for use in a bombing when they raided the shed.
It was the culmination of an intelligence operation that had been in place for a number of weeks and the trailer and cylinders would have been moved to another location, possibly north of the Border, for the next stage in the bomb-making process.