The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has told the Dáil that up to 1,500 people are actively involved in the Provisional IRA.
He told Fine Gael's Jim O'Keeffe that individual dissident republican organisations would not have more than 150 members apiece.
The Minister said he believed internal consultations within the Provisional movement were at an advanced stage.
He said it was now a matter for the leadership to say that they would be ending criminality and paramilitarism and finish once and for all what he called their reign of terror in nationalist areas.
