Irish police arrested two men with a pipe bomb in County Waterford and charged another man with a murder conspiracy in their latest crackdown on IRA dissidents.

In Waterford, police stopped a car on Saturday night containing two dissident IRA members and a pipe bomb.

In Omagh in Tyrone, police  charged a 30-year-old man Daniel Turnbull with planning a dissident IRA murder attempt.

Last Monday, Northern Ireland police arrested Turnbull and three other suspects in a vehicle that contained a loaded revolver and bullets hidden in a sock. 

Police said they will also link Turnbull to another cache of IRA weapons that were seized including a sub machine gun.

Police have said that the continued threat from IRA dissidents has increased in the past few months and police in Britain have upped their security alert there for fear of dissident IRA bombings.