Until the death on Sunday of Andy Kearney, both governments and most of the main political parties on this island were, effectively, turning a blind eye to the fact that the Provisional IRA was again stepping up its so-called "punishment" beatings and shootings and the forced expulsion of people from areas where the IRA has strength.
Few leading politicians and relatively few sections of the media have paid attention to the rise in this form of brutal social control that is being imposed on working-class nationalist areas.
The inevitable result of any serious pressure on the IRA and its political wing, Sinn Fein, was that the attacks actually increased significantly at the start of the summer. There were nine IRA shootings in June, and in July a young Downpatrick man was lucky to survive when shot seven times.
The Downpatrick man was the victim of the most severe form of paramilitary "punishment". He was shot three times in each leg, a form of punishment known as a "six pack". An attempt was also made to paralyse him by shooting him in the spine, but he is recovering. The shooting of someone in the spine in this fashion was introduced by the IRA some years ago in Newry. It is known as a "50-50 job" because the intention is to leave the victim half-paralysed.
Records kept by FAIT (Families Against Intimidation and Terror) show there have been 30 republican (mostly IRA) and 17 Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Volunteer Force shootings so far this year. On top of this there have been 27 republican and 36 loyalist beatings where victims have received injuries even worse than those who were shot.
Also, the IRA in Derry has forced seven people to leave the town, threatening them with death if they return.
The anti-intimidation groups FAIT and Outcry are the only groups specifically championing the rights of the victims of these attacks. Both organisations consistently state that the reasons for many of the attacks are simply that the victims have fallen foul of paramilitary figures.
The murder of Mr Kearney is said by local sources in Belfast to have resulted from a dispute between him and a senior IRA figure in the city.
Mr Kearney was said, even by his family, to have a short temper and to have been prone to brawling.
He was involved in a brawl with an Ardoyne IRA figure who has been linked to the bombing of Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill Road in October 1993 in which 10 people died. This man is said to have become involved in a row with a woman from west Belfast and subsequently Mr Kearney also became involved and is said to have beaten up the IRA man in a bar.
This, according to the anti-intimidation groups, is a standard precursor to a paramilitary "punishment" shooting or beating. Mr Kearney was said to have been apprehensive that he was going to be shot.
On Sunday eight IRA men took up positions in the tower block where he lived with his girlfriend and infant child, sealed off the lift, overpowered him with chloroform and struck him with a rifle butt before shooting him in the leg beneath the knee, severing an artery.
They then tore out the telephone wire and blocked the lifts as they left. His girlfriend, holding her baby, had to run down the stairwell to summon an ambulance. Mr Kearney bled to death.
Appeals to the Sinn Fein leadership to denounce the killing and say the IRA's war was over were met with the formulaic responses that have issued from the organisation since the peace process began. The party's north Belfast assembly representative, Mr Gerry Kelly, who served a lengthy jail sentence for his part in an IRA bombing campaign in London, said the shooting of Mr Kearney was "wrong" and it "should not have happened".
Later in the week an appeal by the Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, to the IRA and Sinn Fein to say that "their war is over" was rebutted by the Sinn Fein deputy leader, Mr Pat Doherty.
The effect of these events has been to bring to a head the problems facing both governments over how to tie Sinn Fein, which has a sufficient electoral mandate to get a place in government at Stormont, to the Belfast Agreement stipulation that all parties in government be committed to "exclusively peaceful democratic means".
The killing of Mr Kearney and the confirmation that the IRA carried it out is also a severe setback to the Ulster Unionist leadership's preparedness to share government with republicans. The killing will also revive the opposition of the anti-agreement unionists who had received a severe moral setback with the murders of the three Quinn children in Ballymoney on July 12th.
In addition, the continued failure of the IRA and the other loyalist paramilitary groups to decommission any weapons will further add to unionist opposition to the Northern Ireland constitutional Bill, currently before the British parliament, to pass powers to the new Northern Assembly.