The Government has indicated it will not be seeking an independent inquiry into the Stormontgate spy ring affair and allegations that a key Sinn Féin official was a British agent.
It comes as the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern is to raise the controversy with the British Northern Secretary Peter Hain at a meeting in Hillsborough in Belfast this afternoon.
Mr Ahern is expected to seek further information from Mr Hain about recent events, which saw spying charges against three Sinn Féin Stormont officials dropped for unexplained reasons, followed last Friday by the outing of one the three, Denis Donaldson, by Sinn Féin on Friday as a British agent for the past 20 years.
The reaction of the Government to date has been marked by incredulity and bewilderment, although it is anxious that the affair does not divert efforts away from the re-establishment of democratic institutions in the North.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, in the early hours of Saturday morning set the tone of the Government's approach, when he said that Stormontgate "never added up to me".
"A large number of police and huge armaments, storming in, to collect a few clerks and a few files and the TV was in first. You could throw no light on it whatsoever, none."
Last night on RTÉ Tánaiste Mary Harney described the controversy and the outing of Mr Donaldson as a spy as incredible, although she effectively ruled out a public inquiry into the affair.
"I think the last thing we probably need right now is some form of inquiry which may not get very far," she said.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams will also meet Mr Hain on the issue this afternoon.
Security sources said yesterday that Mr Donaldson was not the republican informant who over three years ago alerted the authorities about the alleged spy ring which led to the October 2002 raid on Stormont that collapsed the Northern Executive and Assembly.
They said that Mr Donaldson, while an effective agent, did not tell his handlers about the alleged IRA intelligence gathering either to protect other republicans engaged in spying at Stormont or to prevent the IRA suspecting he was an agent. They said a second agent acting independently of Mr Donaldson revealed the alleged spy ring.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams claimed yesterday that "dissident elements" within the "British system" had conspired to harm Sinn Féin and wreck the political process. A senior Sinn Féin figure added that these alleged "dissidents" had planned that Mr Donaldson would have been forced to flee the North so that the next Independent Monitoring Commission report in January could say the IRA was still active and still a threat.
Mr Hain rejected Sinn Féin conspiracy allegations insisting the IRA ran a spy ring at Stormont.
