Army Council is redundant

The IMC, the Independent Monitoring Commission set up to oversee decommissioning of paramilitary arms, today issued its latest report.

In this groundbreaking report, the IMC makes clear that the Army Council is now redundant.

It makes clear that it is a conscious decision that the Army Council has fallen into disuse. Crucially the IMC concludes that “PIRA has completely relinquished the leadership and other structures appropriate to a time of armed conflict.”

The report states that the PIRA is firmly set on a political, rather than terrorist, path and that as an organisation it is withering away. The report also declares that to the question of whether PIRA “might re-emerge as a terrorist organization... our answer...is firmly in the negative.”

In the last few years we have seen huge progress in the political process. Today's Report is a major event in this process. PIRA should now not just be judged by what it said it would do, but today by what the IMC tells us it has done.

I urge people to read the Report very carefully. As the IMC made clear “what matters is that the armed conflict is completely over and the leadership structures have definitely ceased to function in the way they did during the time of conflict.”

Today's Report confirms this has happened.