The leader of the SDLP, Mark Durkan, has said that all those who believe in democratic principles are losing out because of last month's Northern Bank robbery in Belfast.
He said the British and Irish governments must work to ensure that the values at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement were protected in the unstable political climate created by the bank raid.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin Chairman Mitchell McLaughlin said that attempts to put together a political deal in the North were in considerable difficulty.
However, he insisted that problems in the current process existed before the recent robbery.
He said that the IRA had been asked if they were involved and came back with a very definitive answer.
Speaking after what he described as an angry Ard Comhairle meeting in Dublin, he said that 45 of the most senior detectives available to the PSNI were unable to point to a scrap of evidence to link the IRA to the bank raid.
He suggested, therefore, that the North's police are looking in the wrong direction.
The North's Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, yesterday said he thought the IRA was responsible for the heist.
