CLAIMS that the Continuity IRA shot dead David Byrne in revenge for the murder of Real IRA boss Alan Ryan have been met with surprise.
Gardai have linked the 35-year-old’s cold-blooded execution to a gangland feud between two Dublin crime families.
In recent years the Continuity IRA has undergone major upheaval, resulting in a debilitating split and the emergence of a breakaway faction centred mostly in Limerick, but with members across Ireland.
Observers believe that if republicans were involved in Friday's killing, it was most likely this faction.
A statement on Monday night suggested the mainstream Continuity IRA, which has links to Republican Sinn Féin, had no involvement in the brazen gun attack.
It has pockets of support across the north, particularly in the north Armagh area.
At the time of his murder in 2012, Alan Ryan was a senior member of the Real IRA in Dublin who had clashed with several crime families.
That the Continuity IRA and not his former Real IRA colleagues would avenge his death at first seems unlikely.
In the months after Ryan’s murder the Real IRA was subsumed into the emerging ‘IRA’.
However, several of his former colleagues were later sidelined by the new grouping, which also includes independent republicans and members of Republican Action Against Drugs.
If former associates have found a home in the Limerick CIRA faction then the possibility of that group being responsible gains more currency.
The possibility of intelligence agencies having a hand in the claim will not be ruled out by some republicans, nor will the prospect of gangland figures making an erroneous claim to sow seeds of confusion.
Evidence pointing away from crime gang involvement includes the use of weapons readily available to republicans.
In the past, Dublin-based criminals have tended to rely on an assortment of short arms, including Austrian-made Glock handguns.
The weapons used by three of the gunmen were not AK-47 assault rifles as reported but instead AKM rifles, which are similar in appearance.
Some of the weapons supplied to the Provisional IRA in the 1980s by former Lybian leader Muammar Gaddafi were of the AKM variety.
In the intervening years some of these weapons have made their way to anti-agreement groups including the Real IRA and its off-shoot, Óglaigh na hÉireann.
The CIRA failed to secure any significant amount of these weapons because it was formed in 1986, which pre-dated the emergence the peace process and the Provisional - Real IRA split on the late 1990s.
Despite this the group has managed to acquire some heavier calibre weaponry from disgruntled republicans over the years.
An AK-47 is said to have been used by the mainstream CIRA to kill PSNI constable Stephen Carroll in 2009.
Paramilitary charges were brought against several men alleged to be associated with the breakaway faction arrested at a house which had been under surveillance in Newry in 2014.
