A separate body, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC), was set up by the British and Irish Governments in January 2004, at the request of Unionists, to monitor paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland. The members of this commission are Dick Kerr (a former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency), Joe Brosnan (a former Secretary General of the Department of Justice in Dublin) and John Grieve (a former Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police). It is chaired by Lord Alderdice, who was once leader of the Northern Ireland Alliance Party and then speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The IMC bases its reports on information supplied by the security services in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

On 1 February 2006, the IMC published its 8^th report. It challenged the conclusion restated by the IICD on 19 January 2006 (and also made public on 1 February 2006) that the IRA had disarmed and suggested that the IRA had held on to significant amounts of arms. The IMC did so without taking into account Garda evidence to the contrary, evidence that was in its possession from 19 January 2006 or earlier.

This was an extraordinarily irresponsible thing for the IMC to do, given the existing scepticism about the IRA decommissioning amongst Protestants in Northern Ireland, scepticism that the IMC has now added to without taking account of all the available evidence.

The IICD document begins by reporting the continuing refusal of Loyalist paramilitary groups to disarm and holds out little prospect that this situation is going to change in the immediate future.

The document then goes on to give an account of the IICD’s investigation of reports suggesting that the IRA had held on to arms. To be precise, the IICD says that in the week beginning the 9 January 2006 it received information, from what it describes as "security sources in Northern Ireland", that "some individuals and groups within the IRA have retained a range of arms including handguns". However, "there was no suggestion" in these reports that "these arms (purportedly kept for personal protection and area defence) have been retained with the approval of the IRA leadership or as part of a strategy to return to violence".

This information entered a question mark against the IICD’s conclusion in its report of 26 September last year that "the IRA has met its commitment to put all of its arms beyond use in a manner called for by the legislation". At that time, the IICD qualified this conclusion by saying that a small number of arms might have gone astray over the years as individual custodians died or the locations of some caches were lost.

The IICD says that they discussed this intelligence assessment with "senior officers in the Garda Siochana", who informed them that "what they regard as reliable sources in relation to the IRA and its weaponry, have produced no intelligence suggesting any arms have been retained". On the basis of this Garda intelligence, and after discussions with the IRA representative to the IICD, they concluded:

The final paragraph of the IICD report states:

So, by 19 January the IMC was aware that Garda intelligence did not confirm reports from "security sources in Northern Ireland" that the IRA had held on to weapons over and above what had previously been believed possible by the IICD. This is important in what follows.

To turn now to the IMC report, in Paragraphs 4.4 to 4.7, it paints a picture of ongoing Loyalist paramilitary violence, and very little Republican paramilitary violence (and none by the IRA), in the period under review (1 September 2005 to 30 November 2005).

For example, according to the IMC, 22 individuals were shot and 9 assaulted by paramilitaries in this period, and all the shootings and all but one of the assaults were by Loyalist paramilitaries. The IMC attributes the other to a dissident republican group, not the IRA.

The IMC attributes the one death in the period (of Jim Gray), to the UDA, and all but one of the 18 paramilitary killings in the nearly two years since 1 March 2003 to Loyalist paramilitaries. It attributes the other to the Real IRA.

Clearly, the paramilitary problem in Northern Ireland is, generally speaking, not Republican, although it would be difficult to glean this from media accounts of the IMC report. Loyalist paramilitaries are still hurting people in Northern Ireland, and driving people from their homes, to a much greater extent than Republican paramilitaries. And there is no evidence, from the IMC report or elsewhere, that the IRA as an organisation has been responsible for any activity of this kind since 28 July last year, when volunteers were ordered to engage in exclusively peaceful activity.

Indeed, contrary to many media accounts, the IMC seems to believe that the IRA as an organisation has lived up to its undertaking of 28 July last year to end its armed campaign and engage in exclusively peaceful activity. Here are some extracts from it about the IRA, which you may not have come across in media accounts:

All this indicates that the IMC believes that the IRA is doing what its leadership said it would do on 28 July last year.

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As has been widely reported, the IMC qualifies this picture in a number of ways.

First and foremost, the IMC report challenges the judgement of the IICD, expressed in its report of 26 September 2005, that "the IRA has met its commitment to put all of its arms beyond use in a manner called for by the legislation". Paragraph 3.23 states:

(The report goes on to say:

Clearly, these "unconfirmed" reports were what the IICD received from "security services in Northern Ireland" (see above), reports which were not confirmed by Garda intelligence and led the IICD to conclude that their judgement of 26 September 2005 was not invalidated by the totality of the available evidence.

However, despite being informed of all this by 19 January 2006 at the latest (see above), the IMC went ahead and published a report on 1 February which suggested that the IRA had retained arms contrary to the IICD report of 26 September 2005. The IMC did this in the full knowledge that Garda intelligence told a different story. Not only that, the IMC allowed this view to gain currency, without qualification, after the publication of their report, while knowing that there were contrary indications. Putting into the public domain, and publicly defending, what you know to be untrue is generally known as lying.

As a consequence of this, and with the assistance of the DUP, there are now very few Protestants in Northern Ireland, who don’t believe that the IRA retained significant amounts of arms last September – and that the IICD’s assurance to the contrary was unwarranted. The reputation of the IICD has been undermined in the Protestant community on the basis of "unconfirmed" reports that don’t even go so far as to say that the IRA leadership was responsible for the alleged arms retention. Thanks to the IMC, "unconfirmed" reports of arms retention have become facts in the minds of most Protestants, even though Garda intelligence told a different story.

You can take your pick as to whether the IMC broadcast this misleading information out of incompetence or bias. Either way, they should be composing letters of resignation.

* * * * *

Other "less satisfactory indicators both of the behaviour of PIRA as an organisation and of the conduct of some of its members" are described in paragraphs 3.19 to 3.22 of the IMC report.

One thing needs to be nailed at the outset: a paramilitary organisation, with a system of discipline up to and including the execution of members who step out of line, can reasonably be held responsible for the behaviour of its members. But, now that the IRA has ceased to be a paramilitary organisation, it cannot be held responsible for the behaviour of its members. It’s like holding the Conservative Party responsible for the behaviour of Jeffrey Archer.

Critics of the IRA cannot have it both ways: they cannot demand that the IRA cease to be a paramilitary organisation, and at the same time demand that it discipline its members, let alone its ex-members. So, anything in the IMC report that makes allegations about the behaviour of members and ex-members should be discounted as irrelevant.

The IMC does make some allegations about the behaviour of the IRA as an organisation. We are told (paragraph 3.19) that it is engaged in "intelligence gathering". In the public mind, this phrase means activity with a view to paramilitary action. Since the IMC specifically rules this out in paragraph 3.19, its use of this phrase is grossly misleading. Insofar as one can make any sense of the MI5-speak that the IMC regurgitate in this paragraph, it seems to be that the IRA is gathering information for political purposes like other political organisations. Journalists sometimes do something similar.

Then, there is the "accusation" that

If another political organisation, or a local community organisation, was engaged in such activities, it would probably be generally approved of.

As for criminal activity by the IRA as an organisation, the IMC says that it has "no reports of PIRA sanctioned robberies in the period under review". The only hint of IRA sanctioned criminal activity is in paragraph 3.22, where the IMC says:

Prosecutions will do doubt come along shortly – together with the flying pigs.