THE Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, was last night briefed on the police operation in London by the British Prime Minister Mr Major.
According to a Government spokesman, the two men had arranged last week to have a telephone discussion on the Northern talks at Stormont and the forthcoming European Council meeting in Dublin, but yesterday's events in Hammersmith dominated their conversation.
Mr Bruton congratulated Mr Major on the security operation.
A Government spokesman said that it was "a matter of great relief that effective action taken by the police had foiled whatever plans there were to use the explosive materials in London".
However, it was also a matter of deep concern to the Government that weapons and explosives were available in such quantities in London.
Asked if, in the light of what had occurred in London, the Taoiseach still believed an IRA ceasefire was inevitable, a spokesman said that Mr Bruton still believed that peaceful conditions were essential, adding: "We will continue to give all the encouragement we can to a peace strategy".
The chairman of the Progressive Democrats, Senator John Dardis, said that the discovery of over 10 tonnes of explosives in London proved that peace was "the last thing on the minds of murderous elements in the republican movement". Congratulating the British authorities on their success in averting a likely major attack which could have cost countless lives, he said that the events in London "shed a new light on recent speculative comment about a renewed ceasefire".
There should be no ambivalence in people's minds about the intentions of the republican movement. Sinn Fein now faced a stark choice to continue its "association" with violence or embrace an explicitly democratic process to move the Northern situation forward.