The Government has put the onus firmly on the Sinn Féin leadership to come up with a solution to the political impasse over continuing IRA criminal activity, revealing for the first time that the Garda authorities share the PSNI's assessment that the IRA carried out the recent Northern Bank raid.
The Taoiseach, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dermot Ahern, announced separately yesterday that the Garda assessment was the same as that of the Chief Constable of the PSNI, Mr Hugh Orde.
According to the Taoiseach, "Their assessment is this robbery was carried out by the Provisional movement, and an operation of the scale of this would not have taken place without the agreement and sanction of the leadership."
While Mr Ahern stopped short of saying the Garda assessment was that Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness knew about it in advance, Mr McDowell told reporters nothing had happened to change Mr Ahern's view since the Taoiseach said earlier this month that the IRA was involved.
Mr Adams insisted after meeting the Taoiseach that Mr Ahern could not "stand up" this accusation.
Mr McDowell immediately dismissed the claim, saying the Taoiseach and the two Ministers had not sought to do so. "This was not a meeting at which the Government was going to explain itself, at which the Government was going to share intelligence with them, or the Government was going to set out the basis on which it had come to its conclusions," he said.
The remarks, which display the new tension in the relationship between the Government and Sinn Féin since the Northern Bank raid, followed a series of meetings with that party, the SDLP and the UUP at Government Buildings yesterday to discuss the current deadlock.
Mr Dermot Ahern and Mr McDowell said later that they and Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness agreed the Sinn Féin leadership must go away and "reflect" on the Government's insistence that the criminality issue be dealt with.
A further meeting between the Government and Sinn Féin is expected some time after Mr Ahern meets the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, next Tuesday.
The Taoiseach told the Sinn Féin leaders that he would not support the imposition of sanctions on the party should the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) conclude that the IRA had carried out the robbery.
However, Mr Dermot Ahern said a decision on sanctions was primarily an issue for the British government. "As you know Sinn Féin are already subject to sanctions in relation to the Tohill incident, and there may well be consequences from the next IMC report," he said.
The next IMC report is due in April, but the Taoiseach is to meet the commission next Monday. It is understood that the commission has not yet decided whether to produce a special report in relation to the bank robbery before April.
Emphasising the scale of the current difficulty, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, said on his way into Government Buildings that unionists in Northern Ireland would neither endorse nor tolerate an administration that included Sinn Féin for the foreseeable future.
After what was described as a "frank" meeting - a word typically used to describe a heated exchange - Mr Adams nevertheless sought to stress areas of agreement.
"There is actually quite a lot of agreement between us and the Government on the need to move the process forward and the need to tackle the outstanding issues," he said.
Mr Dermot Ahern agreed that there was "an acceptance that we move ahead with the peace process, but from our point of view it has to be on the basis of exclusively democratic peaceful means".
Mr Adams also struck a more positive note than before on the question of Sinn Féin agreeing to a clause committing itself to working to end criminal activity.
People from different parties could work on drafting something that would give people confidence that the issue had been dealt with, he said.