Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams tonight looked forward to a future without the IRA - and to his party making a controversial move on to the new Northern Ireland policing board.
He told the party's ardfheis in Dublin that Sinn Féin was about making peace. The answer to the question of whether he envisaged a future without the IRA was "an obvious Yes", he said.
But he also warned that the IRA would not respond positively to ultimatums from either the British government or Ulster Unionist leader and former Northern Ireland executive first minister Mr David Trimble.
Mr Adams, delivering his leader's address at the mid-way point in his party's three-day meeting - and being televised live on RTE for the first time at an ardfheis following general election advances by Sinn Féin last year - said the logic of the Northern Ireland peace process was that there would be an end to all armed groups.
He stressed: "In the days and weeks ahead, all of us - the British and Irish governments, the unionists and Sinn Féin - have decisions to make.
"Those decisions could decide whether the peace process takes a great leap forward or whether it continues at the frustrating and begrudging pace that has marked its progress thus far."
On one of the key questions facing his own party - joining or staying out of the policing board, an issue down for debate, but not decision, by the conference tomorrow - Mr Adams insisted: "If I am asked can I see a time when it would be appropriate for Sinn Féin to join the policing board and participate fully in the policing arrangements on a democratic basis, the answer is: Yes."
But he went on: "Are we at that point now? The answer is: No, not yet." The West Belfast MP told 2,000 conference delegates there had been "substantive movement" on policing on the part of the British government.
He went on: "We may know at the end of the current negotiations.
"We want policing under democratic local control and accountability, to be shaped as a community service and not a tool of the 'securocrats'.
"There is no reason why powers on policing and justice cannot be transferred on the same basis as other key issues, such as health, education and economic development.
"We are arguing for the Good Friday Agreement vision or policing to become a reality.
"The people we represent are law-abiding.
"They have a right to be policed by public servants who act on their behalf."
Mr Adams said the commitments made by Britain had been achieved solely by his party's negotiating team.
His speech also echoed sentiments spelled out earlier in the conference by senior party colleague Martin Ferris, a ex IRA man who is now a member of the Dáil criticising the Government's current approach to the peace process - and particularly their attitude towards planned sanctions on parties seen to err in Northern Ireland.
Mr Adams said: "Irish citizens, victimised and targeted by sectarian violence, have a right to expect effective political protection from the Government in Dublin.
"And all sections of the electorate have the right to expect that the Irish Government will uphold their rights in the terms of the Good Friday agreement - instead of stepping outside that agreement to bring in sanctions."
The Sinn Féin president also claimed that the British and Irish establishments' versions of the peace process had failed to allow for his party's growth.
PA