The rival nationalist SDLP said the "buck stopped" with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and that he must resign after Denis Donaldson, the former head of Sinn Fein's offices at the Northen Ireland assembly building, admitted he was a paid British agent for 20 years.
The SDLP's call came amid speculation among republicans that a far more senior politician in Sinn Fein is in fact the mole, and that Donaldson was being forced to take the rap to protect the party.
SDLP vice chairman Eddie Espie said: "This project of super-collusion happened under Gerry Adams' watch. Only a few days ago, Gerry Adams was happy to appear alongside Donaldson on the steps of Stormont, presenting him as a `victim of securocrats' and trying to tell everyone to move on from the Stormontgate affair," he said.
"Now it transpires that Adams was singing the praises of an arch-British agent. The buck stops with him. The only option now open is for Gerry Adams to resign," Espie said.
Republicans have been reeling since it emerged on Friday that Donaldson, Sinn Fein's former head of administration at Stormont, was working for British army and police intelligence since the mid-1980s.
Unionists have demanded a full public inquiry into the "Stormontgate" affair which began in October 2002 when allegations of an IRA spying operation at Stormont prompted suspension of the Northern Ireland assembly and three years of direct rule.
Donaldson, his son-in-law and another civil servant were charged with operating a republican spy ring.
But 10 days ago, the case was dropped when the director of prosecutions said it was not in the public interest.
Donaldson's admission that he had been spying for the British for 20 years has sent shockwaves through the republican community and stoked old fears about Northern Ireland's long and dirty intelligence war.
Donaldson, 55, whose father was an IRA member in the 1950s, was seen as an unlikely traitor to the cause. A Belfast newspaper yesterday claimed he had turned tout in the 1980s to prevent a family member from serving time in prison.
The police have maintained that the IRA was in fact gathering intelligence and unionists want British Prime Minister Tony Blair to explain why the case was mysteriously dropped. But both the government and Sinn Fein seem eager to move on from the affair.
Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness yesterday said the only spy ring which operated at Stormont was run by the British intelligence services, but he stopped short of calling for a public inquiry.
The Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Hain, defended the police operation against republicans at Stormont in 2002.
"Something like a thousand documents were stolen from the Northern Ireland Office over which I now preside. They appeared in a west Belfast situation. They disappeared. They were stolen," he said.
"The police ombudsman said the [police] have done not only what was justified but what was absolutely necessary. Then events unfolded and the prosecution felt that they could not proceed in the public interest."
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