Up to '1,500 active IRA members'

Michael McDowell said there are 1,500 active IRA members

Up to 1,500 people are actively involved in the IRA, Ireland's Justice Minister, Michael McDowell, has said.

Speaking in Ireland's parliament, the Dail, he told Fine Gael's Jim O'Keeffe dissident republican groups would not have more than 150 members each.

Mr McDowell said he believed internal consultations within the Provisional IRA were at an "advanced stage".

He said there was "sporadic evidence" that some paramilitaries were turning to crime to fund new lifestyles.

The minister said that the IRA must respond with actions which will convince all communities that the armed struggle is over and that paramilitarism and criminality was at an end.

"The sooner these decisions are made the better. But they have to be made in a credible way," he said.

"Words alone will not suffice because they have to be accompanied by acts and inaction of a palpable kind that will convince the community at large, and particularly the community that has most to fear from them, that it is well and truly all over."