The IRA ceasefire is "holding" and is of a substantially different nature from previous ceasefires despite the recent splits in the organisation, the Northern Ireland Security Minister, Mr Adam Ingram, said last night. Speaking during a debate in the House of Commons on the renewal of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Bill for another year, Mr Ingram dismissed the reservations of Ulster Unionists that the ceasefire was fragile, saying the security assessment pointed to it being maintained.
"In terms of the quality of the existing ceasefire, in the view of the practitioners on the ground it is holding and is of a substantially different nature from that which applied the last time," Mr Ingram said.
However, despite the IRA and loyalist ceasefires holding, Mr Ingram said, the government needed to fulfil its duty to the security forces in Northern Ireland and retain the powers of the emergency legislation "in the short term".
While the government intended to consolidate emergency legislation throughout the United Kingdom, a decision announced by the Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, last month, Mr Ingram said, "there can be no question of leaving the security forces without the resources they need" to counteract terrorism.
He argued that three amendments to the Bill - increasing the number of scheduled offences that could be tried by jury in Northern Ireland; the end of the "draconian" power of internment; and the introduction of audio recording of interviews of suspected terrorists in holding centres - would go some way to addressing the changing nature of terrorism in Northern Ireland.
The SDLP's deputy leader, Mr Seamus Mallon, said he was almost tempted to give the government's amendments to the Bill "two and a half cheers".
He could not, he said, because the government needed to create legislation "in an imaginative and courageous way, something that would be adequate for the new type of system that we are aiming for".
Pointing to "saturation" by security forces of west Belfast and south Armagh in particular, Mr Mallon called for the removal of Castlereagh detention centre and Gough barracks because they were a symbol of the "failure" of emergency legislation over the years.
Mr Mallon further urged the government and all those involved in the peace process to take a "quantum leap" and take risks for peace in Northern Ireland "and give everyone a chance for a new beginning".
Accusing the government of paying a "ransom" to keep Sinn Fein at the negotiating table, the Ulster Unionist security spokesman, Mr Ken Maginnis, said the IRA ceasefire was holding simply because it had a number of concessions from the government "which can be banked before they return to the Armalite, as they have promised".