Who is the IRA?

The IRA (Irish Republican Army) is a name used to describe several armed movements in Ireland in the 20th and 21st Century.

These groups claim to descend from the original Irish Republican Army, an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation descended from the Irish Volunteers.

The Irish Volunteers were established in 1913 and in April 1916 staged the Easter Rising in Dublin, aiming to end British rule in Ireland and establish an Irish Republic.

The Irish Volunteers were recognised in 1919 by Dáil Éireann (the elected parliament of the Republic of Ireland) as the legitimate army of the unilaterally declared Irish Republic, the Irish state proclaimed at Easter in 1916 and reaffirmed by the Dáil in January 1919.

The original IRA waged a guerrilla campaign against British rule in Ireland in the Irish War of Independence from 1919–1921.

The original IRA split in 1922. After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, members of the IRA who supported the treaty formed the nucleus of the National Army founded by IRA leader Michael Collins.

However, a high proportion of the IRA was opposed to the treaty. The anti-treaty IRA or Republicans fought a civil war with their former comrades in 1922–23, with the intention of creating a fully independent all Ireland republic.

After the end of the Irish Civil War, the IRA was around in one form or another for 40 years, when it split into the Official IRA (OIRA) and the Provisional IRA in 1969, over the issue of abstentionism (whether to sit in or to "abstain" from the Dáil).

Since the decline of the OIRA, the Provisional IRA became known commonly as the IRA.

The IRA's stated objective was to end ‘British rule in Ireland’ and according to its constitution, it wanted ‘to establish an Irish Socialist Republic, based on the Proclamation of 1916.’

Until the 1998 Belfast Agreement, it sought to end Northern Ireland's status within the United Kingdom and bring about a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion.

The organisation is classified as a proscribed terrorist group in the United Kingdom and as an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland.

On July 28, 2005 the IRA Army Council announced an end to its armed campaign, stating that it would work to achieve its aims using ‘purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means’ and that IRA ‘Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.’

The 'Real' IRA (RIRA) is a 1997 breakaway group from the IRA consisting of members opposed to the peace process.

It claimed responsibility for the shooting of two British soldiers in Northern Ireland earlier this year.