IRA Army Council

The IRA Army Council is or was the decision-making body of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, more commonly known as the IRA, a paramilitary group dedicated to bringing about the end of the Union between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The Council had seven members, said by the British and Irish governments to have included Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin. The Independent Monitoring Commission declared in 2008 that the council was "no longer operational or functional". However, the IMC report also says the Army Council still exists and has not dissolved.

The Army Council of the IRA split in December 1969 and a "Provisional" Army Council emerged as the head of the newly formed Provisional Irish Republican Army.

The IRA was a proscribed organization under the terms of the Offences Against the State Acts passed between 1939 and 1998 in the Republic of Ireland and under equivalent anti-terrorist legislation in the United Kingdom, making membership of it a criminal offence. In the Republic, trials for membership take place in the Special Criminal Court (where three judges hear cases without a jury, on the evidence of a Garda superintendent or higher rank) and carries a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.

Senior members of Sinn Féin, some of whom, according to both the British and Irish governments, have sat on the Army Council, together with IRA members not known to be involved in illegal activities, have been effectively immune from prosecution in recent years in order to enable progress in the peace process.

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