What's crucial is that the IRA produce a credible statement that paramilitary and criminality activity is a thing of the past. That they are committed to a future which is exclusively peaceful and democratic.

That Sinn Fein, as I've already indicated, their leaders have already indicated that's what they want to achieve - once we get that credible statement, then we can get around the table and start to move forward, and I'm confident we can do so.

The big missing part of the jig-saw is to get the assembly back up and running here in Northern Ireland, to get shared government back in business, that is my objective, and we await the IRA statement to see if this will trigger a new dawn.

I'm now going through, and indeed have been over the past week, a process in which I will be making an announcement in the next few days.

We'll be launching the new public prosecution service in Northern Ireland tomorrow. I'll be doing it in Belfast tomorrow. This is an entirely new era, in which criminal justice now exercised on an equal basis, not the old basis in which community division was a feature.

The IRA statement yesterday frankly defies any description. It was an extraordinary thing to say.