A woman who believes her brother was murdered by the IRA is demanding to know why the security forces in the North did not tell people there that it had not gone away.

Catherine McCartney was responding to ongoing controversy surrounding what form of the Provisional grouping still exists.

Former Justice Minister Michael McDowell has claimed today that the Irish and British governments allowed the Provisional IRA to continue to exist - rather than risk the fallout if it was disbanded.

"Past splits and schisms in the IRA showed only too clearly that the IRA could more easily metastasise rather than wind itself up. That was seen, and I think rightly, as being the greater evil to be avoided", he writes in the Irish Times.

Catherine McCartney, whose brother Robert was murdered in Belfast in 2005, told Newstalk Breakfast there is no justification for that now.

She says politicians and security forces "were being disingenuous to the people at the best and lying to them at the worst" over the existence of the IRA.

"Now you can say maybe in the early days of the peace process, yes, before it was bedding in, there was maybe that transitional period" she said.

"But we're nearly 20 years into a peace process and certainly 10 years from when the IRA said they left the stage".

"Men have been murdered, there's been no accountability whatsoever".

"There's no need for the IRA to exist in these areas - there's no need for any organisation to exist in these areas" she added.