Northern Ireland

Following the attempted assassination of an IRSP member in May, and the disappearance of a former member in Paris in June, there are fears that the organisation is poised to violently tear itself apart. By Vincent Browne

The fact of an incursion by British troops at Hackballscross and the vandalism which resulted in the closing off of the water supply to Dundalk are of significance. Of even more significance is the manner in which the government ignored the evidence of local people, immediately accepted the British version of events and issued a statement which is contradicted by garda reports. By Fergal Keane

Early in May 1983, the Provisional IRA started to print their own money. Alan murdoch reports.

WHO?" ASKED THE PROTEST ANT SCHOOLchildren blankly as we asked directions to Bishop Cathal Daly's house on Somerton Road in Bellfast. "Oh, you mean the priest." The Catholic crozier still doesn't rate much in North Belfast. In Derry the stones in the street could have directed us to where Bishop Ned Daly, or Fr Daly as he's still known since his curate days, lives overlooking the Bogside and the Foyle. By Olivia O'Leary

IS IT SERIOUSLY SUGGESTED THAT BECAUSE nobody in the Irish Embassy in London could get RTE on Monday evening when Mrs Thatcher's press conference was being broadcast live to the Irish nation that we have lost the best chance for peace in our time, screwed up Anglo-Irish relations and brought much closer a civil war scenario in the North?

As Sinn Fein has become more active, members of the government parties have sought to isolate the Provos politically. The record shows, however, that some of those politicians have for years sought support from Sinn Fein - and some continue to do so in so far as it is politically expedient.  By John McHugh

The Sinn Fein electoral wagon is slowing down. As a result, the IRA is likely to begin stepping up its war against the Northern state. Gene Kerrigan reports from Belfast and also interviews Sinn Fein's Danny Morrison on the party's recent successes and failures.

MARBLE. Marble stairways and marble banisters. Marble balustrade. Marble walls and marble halls, marble pillars and marble arches. Hard and cold and streaked with lines and patches of something coming through. By Gene Kerrigan

It nearly killed John Hume to leave the Bishop's presentation to the Forum a half an hour after it started, but he had to. Margaret Thatcher has asked to see him and Hume wasn't going to miss a chance to put his and the Forum's case. At the door he looked back eagerly. The round table Forum glowed under the television lights. Bishop Cathal Daly was dealing smoothly with his SDLP questioner. The Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, and the opposition leader and the packed press gallery were, straining to hear every word. Hume's Forum was at last hitting the headlines. By Olivia O Leary

For John Hume, this last month may have been the busiest of his life. His supreme skills as a lobbyist, as a political broker, as a twister of guilty consciences, have been stretched to the limit; Desperate to be seen to be as busy politically as the Provisionals are militarily about the nation's unfinished business, Hume last year bludgeoned the political parties in the Republic into the New Ireland Forum. BY OLIVIA O'LEARY