Security expert Brian Rowan asks if a new Independent Monitoring Commission report can persuade the doubters that the IRA Army Council has gone away

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams (right) and Martin McGuinness (left) carry the coffin of Brian Keenan The republican offered the comment: “The IRA has left the stage — is gone.” He was speaking in response to the news that the Independent Monitoring Commission is to make a specific report on the IRA transition and structures in a few weeks’ time — by September 1.

That report has been requested by the British and Irish governments, and the four IMC commissioners — Lord Alderdice, Joe Brosnan, John Grieve and Dick Kerr — met in Belfast some days ago and agreed to proceed.

The request has the look of something designed to aid the move towards the devolution of policing and justice powers — a report that is about trying to clear some of the remaining hurdles.

One source put it this way — that the objective is to try to “remove one of the excuses the DUP would use ? taking out of the equation some of the argument in the DUP position.”

But how do you prove that the IRA Army Council is no longer functioning, no longer meeting?

Will ‘P O’Neill’ raise his voice to say that that leadership has been disbanded?

“I’m not expecting anything of that kind,” a source commented.

All of that would be a little too obvious — an IRA statement, an IMC report and a smooth transition towards the establishment of the new justice department at Stormont.

Others are not as quick to rule out a possible IRA statement.

The IMC position on the IRA has been set out in the course of a number of reports — that it has “effectively withered away” — that the transformation from war to peace is “all but complete in the case of PIRA”.

In the words of one well-placed source, the September 1 report will be “a clarification and confirmation” of that assessment.

Brian Keenan — a “hawk” in the IRA’s war and a key figure in the process that delivered decommissioning — was part of the IRA Army Council.

And at his funeral some weeks ago, you saw the changing IRA, a transformed organisation in white shirts and black ties, a small number in berets, out on the streets to remember and salute one of its dead.

There were no masks and no guns. That IRA — seen on the day of the funeral — will never go away, will always be there. And that peacetime organisation is always likely to have a leadership, whether it is called the Army Council or something else.

The important question is not whether the Army Council continues to exist.

More important is the question: is the IRA “war” over?

Can that be believed? Is that a position that people can have confidence in?

The IMC believes it is, and that view is shared in the highest ranks of policing.

“I have no difficulty accepting that the IRA war is over,” a senior police officer commented.

“The Army Council had a role during the conflict,” he continued — “if it’s over, what’s it doing?”

His view is “of course it should stand down” — that “in a democratic society there shouldn’t be any illegal organisations”.

But he also accepts that the Army Council has managed the republican transition from war to peace.

What it has done is order the IRA organisation into its various peace moves and initiatives such as ceasefires, decommissioning, the formal ending of the armed campaign and the endorsement and acceptance of new policing.

That Army Council no longer meets to discuss the business of war.

The question now is can the IMC persuade the doubters, and are republicans prepared to say anything more as part of a process of confidence building? We will know in a few weeks’ time.