There are no plans to arm gardaí in this State, Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan insisted today.
Mr Lenihan was speaking at a conference on organised crime in Co Meath.
Mr Lenihan emphasised the role of the cross-border police cooperation in dealing with new threats in organised crime but accepted the "traditional agenda" hadn't gone away.
"Of course anyone who hasn't fully subscribed to the peace process, that is such a success on this island, and has a paramilitary past is a danger and a threat and has to be dealt with," he said.
"We work very closely with the authorities in Northern Ireland to make sure that threat is kept to the minimum possible risk."
Mr Lenihan also ruled out any short-term plans to arm uniformed gardaí in response to the growing gun culture in the Republic that has seen officers targeted several times in the past year.
"We've just got away from arming the police in one part of Ireland - the uniformed police force - and I think it would be disappointing if we then moved towards arming the uniformed police force in the other part of Ireland," he said.
"When uniformed, the tradition is the gardaí are not armed and there are no immediate plans to change that."
Mr Lenihan was speaking at the fifth annual Organised Crime Cross-Border Co-Operation Seminar in Enfield, Co Meath.
The conference brings together the PSNI, Garda Síochána, the Department of Justice, the Northern Ireland Office and Revenue and Customs authorities from both sides of the border.
PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde, told the conference he was substantially worried about the capacity of breakaway paramilitary groups to destroy political progress.
"The thing that still worries me substantially - and takes up a lot of our time and a lot of Garda Síochána time - is that the dissident republican threat remains," he said.
"There is a harsh reality still, around a small group of people who are determined to wreck all that's been achieved, and that's the Continuity IRA, the Real IRA and the INLA," said Mr Orde.
"The successes we have had both north and south of the border collectively is probably one of the most powerful examples of how shared policing has moved on the peace process.
"But it (the dissident threat) is something that hasn't gone away."
The PSNI chief said in the last two months a 400lb bomb - 125 per cent the size of the Omagh bomb, which killed 29 people -had been recovered while several arrests had been made in relation to paramilitary activity.
"So the notion that we can forget the past when we look at the new threats is simply a flawed one," he said.
He insisted that although the dissident element was small and without significant support they remained a serious danger.
"They are out of date, they are behind the times, they are not having the support of the communities, they seem to have lost the plot, they have no real political strategy," he said.
"I would describe them as disorganised and discredited, rather than competent. But they are nonetheless dangerous."
PA