THE huge public and political welcome for the ceasefire announcement by Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH) will not have gone unnoticed by the remaining dissident republican organisations.
While many of those groups have fractured considerably, and broken off into small criminal enterprises such as Action Against Drugs (AAD), they do still pose a threat, albeit mainly to members of their own community.
With the Continuity IRA all but extinct, the group known as the New IRA remains the largest active armed republican organisation.
Members have been behind the murder of prison officers David Black and Adrian Ismay, as well as numerous gun and attempted bomb attacks.
They were also involved in the recent appearance of graffiti in Derry threatening prison officers.
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Formed from a merger of former members of the Real IRA and independent republicans, many of the main players walked away in the early days leaving only a small hard core, along with some young and impressionable new recruits.
Like ONH, the veteran members are under almost constant surveillance and many are facing charges as a result of covert intelligence operations.
Seizures of weapons by the PSNI, including the discovery of an automatic weapon close to Belfast Zoo recently, have also seen the organisation's limited arsenal shrink dramatically.
The key line in the ceasefire statement from ONH is the reference to the environment not being "conducive to armed conflict".
Sources close to the group say that they read the mood, not just within their own community but across the island in general and accepted that political changes of the last few years had to be taken into account.
The context is high voter turnout in nationalist areas in the two snap elections last year, statements by senior members of the Irish government reiterating their support for the unification of the island, the growing calls for a border poll.
All this has fed into the thinking of the ONH leadership and by calling a cessation of violence recognising the current political climate, they have put the New IRA on the back foot.
The group could continue launching sporadic attacks every few months, and watch as its members - including those new recruits with no experience of conflict or prison - go to jail, but they would do this knowing that violence will have zero impact on the constitution of Northern Ireland.
With the older and more experienced republican thinkers of ONH having called time on their campaign, the dissident groups that remain will find it increasingly difficult to justify their continued existence.
