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Input: By Vincent KearneyBBC News NI Home Affairs Correspondent Chief Constable George Hamilton has already made it clear that the police believe the Provisional IRA still exists, and that some of its members were involved in the murder of Kevin McGuigan in east Belfast in August. Mr Hamilton has also said: Unless there have been dramatic developments in recent weeks, the paramilitary assessment to be published by Northern Ireland Secretary of State Theresa Villiers on Tuesday will mirror those views. What the Chief Constable has not said is whether the IRA's ruling army council remains intact. I asked Mr Hamilton that question on 22 August, just minutes after his press conference at PSNI headquarters when he said members of the IRA killed Kevin McGuigan. "I don't want to get into the detail of that," he replied. "What I am happy to say is that, at an operational level, we do not see the infrastructure that existed in the 1990s - people are not targeting, there is no procurement of weapons, there is no intention to murder people for political purposes. "Our assessment is that the hierarchy of the organisation, so that it can be co-ordinated, controlled, and that members can be influenced, still exists. "There's a number of names given to different tiers of that hierarchy, and I am not going to start speculating," Mr Hamilton added. 'Political alternative' Ass Ch Con Will Kerr, the officer who leads the PSNI's efforts to combat paramilitary activity, has also refused to be drawn on the issue. Last month, he told a public meeting of the policing board that the IRA's operational tier, its so-called Active Service Units, no longer exist. But when asked a direct question about whether the IRA army council is still in place, he declined to comment, saying he did not want to talk about "labels". Given that the aim of this assessment is to provide an analysis of the current structure of the Provisional IRA, it seems reasonable to expect it to answer this question. If it says there is an army council, the focus will be on what it says about its role and purpose. Mr Hamilton has suggested that retaining some level of control may have been necessary for the IRA to ensure its members supported a political alternative to violence. "There is a mechanism, perhaps to bring people along this path of the peace process, to pursue a peaceful political republican agenda without recourse to violence," he told me in August. 'Prevent defections' The chief constable has said its role and purpose today is "radically" different to the period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, when it directed a campaign of violence. Some security sources have also said the continued existence of a Provisional IRA structure may have helped prevent defections of former members to the ranks of dissident republican organisations. The chief constable has publicly managed to avoid answering direct questions about the current status of the IRA army council. It is unlikely he managed to avoid answering similar questions from the paramilitary assessment panel appointed by the secretary of state. The question now is, will Ms Villiers reveal the answer in her statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon?

NI paramilitary report: Does IRA 'army council' still exist?