The Provisional IRA has left the stage: so said the DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson a couple of years ago. As one of the North's most senior unionists, Mr Donaldson was speaking in the context of the Northern Ireland peace process. But the involvement of former IRA members in crime, organised, opportunistic or sexual, is a different story.
he names of former IRA bombers, killers and activists continue to crop up in dozens of police investigations, on both sides of the Border, into crimes ranging from smuggling, racketeering, extortion, murder and sexual abuse.
Nine years on from IRA decommissioning, the Provos are dogged by a legacy of past crimes and damned by their continued involvement in racketeering and criminality.
The person who has turned the spotlight on the 'non-political' activities of the IRA is Mairia Cahill, who last month went public on the rape and abuse she suffered at the hands of a senior IRA member in Belfast, telling how she was hauled before a "kangaroo court" and interrogated by his IRA colleagues.
Her story was a reminder of what was beneath the so-called political integrity that the republican movement prides itself on - an underbelly of common criminals and abusers, many of whom were protected for years by the IRA's internal punishment squads.
At first, Mairia's was a lone voice. However, since she first told her story on the BBC Spotlight programme last month, others have come forward.
Last weekend, two young women confirmed through their solicitor that they too were abused by the same IRA man alleged to have raped and abused Mairia, over a period of three years. They too went to the police and, like Mairia, they were also let down by the criminal justice system.
In Louth, a young man who was emboldened by Mairia Cahill went to his local Garda station to make a formal complaint that he, along with his brother, had been abused as a boy by a prominent IRA man who lives across the Border and who is still at large in the community. And, like Mairia, he was also subjected to a "kangaroo court"; interrogated by the IRA at two secret meetings.
Meanwhile, in Dublin's north inner city, other stories of IRA abuse have been circulating for months. A young woman has made a criminal complaint against a man who was once one of the IRA's most senior commanders, alleging that he had abused her. In doing so, she defied the anti-Garda protocol observed in the republican stronghold of her community. The former IRA commander now lives abroad. But his victim is pressing for his prosecution.
Under siege from Mairia Cahill and critics urging him to fess up to what he knew, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, has said that sex abusers within the IRA were shot or expelled.
But the smugglers, money- launderers, thieves and robbers within the ranks of the IRA escaped sanction - even if they didn't have the prior approval of their Provo bosses for all their crimes, according to senior security sources.
"There is no area of criminal conduct they will shy away from," said one senior officer. "We have recorded the likes of smuggling, debt-collection, protection rackets and money- lending.
"There is a younger generation of (IRA) connected people who have access to large amounts of cash from smuggling or whatever. They have a problem with laundering it. One of the ways they do this is through money-lending. They charge high interest and have short repayment periods."
The IRA moneylenders' targets are families in the communities and small businesses struggling in the recession, with no access to credit.
"It is a menace. We have some cases under investigation but very few. We've become aware of this in the last couple of years. It's rare you will find someone who is prepared to go through with a complaint and give evidence, such is the fear," said the security source.
According to one senior officer, the view is that many of these former Provo criminals are still under the thumb of the organisation to which they plead allegiance.
"They are individuals [committing the crimes] but there is still a control network there. If a new person were to arrive along the Border to set up a new fuel business, it wouldn't be long before they'd get a visit."
Earlier this year, the former Minister for Justice Michael McDowell caused a storm when he said that gardai decided at least 14 years ago that they would stop prosecuting historical Provo crimes and concentrate instead on investigating current crimes.
According to one security source, IRA members are implicated in so much "current crime" that there aren't the resources to delve back into their historic ones.
The Criminal Assets Bureau seems to have emerged as the Garda's main weapon deployed against former and active members of the Provisional IRA. Particularly since the most audacious IRA crime of them all, the £26m Northern Bank robbery in 2004.
Last year, the CAB went after Don Bullman, an IRA member caught with €94,000 found in a box of Daz soap powder, part of the suspected proceeds of the Northern Bank robbery. He was jailed for IRA membership. He had worked as a chef but last year the CAB secured a High Court judgement against him for €600,000, for what was described as a "Revenue debt".
The CAB's scope has widened beyond the millions still missing from the robbery, to cigarette smugglers, diesel launderers and suspected extortionists.
In the Border counties, where Revenue officials uncovered a diesel laundering plant last week, some of the most notorious and protected IRA smugglers have been served with tax demands.
Earlier this year, a businessman suspected of running one of the biggest fuel-smuggling and oil-laundering frauds along the border under the protection of the IRA, was slapped with a €1m tax demand.
The other activity favoured by former IRA chiefs is tax- dodging. Several, somehow, accumulated outstanding tax bills running to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in undeclared "earnings". There is no evidence to suggest they were linked to organised crime.
One recent CAB target, John Noonan, demonstrated the sort of earnings that former Provo chiefs were able to rake in.
Noonan ran various enterprises, including taxi companies. But he was also an IRA adjutant officer, and a senior Provo in Dublin until 2004, when he went into the security business. He lived in a council house in Tallaght and was involved in the local anti-drugs movement.
However, when CAB began investigating him for unpaid tax, they discovered the former Provo chief wasn't short of assets.
During the boom, he acquired nine properties, including a half-share in a €160,000 apartment in Alicante, Spain, and a berth on a marina. He had five mortgages and his assets were worth around €2m. He went bankrupt in 2011, after CAB slapped him with a €2.6m tax demand.
Officers discovered a bank account in the name of Peter Simpson, in which several hundred thousand Euros had been lodged.
Noonan claimed he operated the bank account for the "Republican movement".
Last year, CAB started legal proceedings against Leonard Hardy, a convicted IRA bomber who lives in Louth, for outstanding taxes of €280,000.
He had served time in prison for possession of explosives in Ireland, was released under the Good Friday Agreement, and in 2006 he got a second jail sentence, of six years, in Germany for bombing a British army base there 15 years earlier.
When he appeared before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in July this year for failing to make tax returns over a five-year period, he was described as someone who was "integral" to the Good Friday Agreement and who had helped to maintain the agreement through "fragile periods."
Hardy settled his bill with the Revenue Commissioners for €280,000 and pleaded guilty to failing to file income tax returns. He escaped with a €10,000 fine, and his early release licence remains intact.
In fact, few IRA convicts who were freed under the Good Friday agreement have had their licences revoked for criminal activity.
Those that have include the convicted IRA killer Robert Duffy, who was four years into a life sentence for murdering a businessman in the driveway of his home because he had done some work for the RUC.
He was released in 2000 under the Good Friday Agreement, moved to Dundalk where eight years later, he shot the son of a local publican in the face at point blank range.
Duffy got life for attempted murder. The Northern Ireland authorities revoked his early release licence, so when he gets out, he faces extradition to the North to finish out his sentence.
When he was sentencing Duffy, the judge talked about the duty to protect the people of Ireland from "individuals who act as though they are untouchable".
The days when the IRA could get away with being its own police force have passed. However, while the Provisional IRA may have "left the stage" its criminal legacy is still centre stage.
