A senior Ulster Unionist today called for a public inquiry into allegations the IRA had been operating a spy ring at Stormont.
Following claims by police that they have smashed a republican intelligence operation in Belfast Mr Michael McGimpsey, a minister in the suspended devolved Stormont administration, said such an inquiry was the only way of uncovering exactly what had been going on.
Mr McGimpsey insisted his party was keen to see the political institutions up and running again, but Sinn Féin had to convince everyone else that they had changed and were behaving as a normal political party.
At the moment the major obstacle was republican inability to live up to their obligations and responsibilities, he said.
Sinn Féin "could not assure that their own movement sticks to purely peaceful, democratic, non-violent means," he said.
Meanwhile speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, Sinn Féin chairman Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, claimed that had there been a spy ring operating, it could have been happening without Sinn Féin's knowledge.
He said: "Sinn Féin has no control over the activities of a whole range of people and Sinn Féin are far from convinced that anything such as has been alleged is actually happening."
The reality was that over a long period of conflict people had been watching very closely what others were doing.
"There have been leaks all over the place and in some cases because the information is going to unionists it doesn't seem to have been exercising people," said Mr McLaughlin.
What people should be concentrating on was that the collective leadership of unionism had "lost their bottle and backed off the challenge of putting in place the political institutions that would move us all away from that type of history," he said.
Unionists had "lost their nerve" and were hiding behind the securocrats agenda.
PA