It emerged from a split in the Provisional IRA in 1986 but did not become active until the Provisional IRA ceasefire of 1994.

The Continuity IRA has its origins in a split in the Provisional IRA.

Thus, similar to the claim put forward by the Provisional IRA after its split from the Official IRA in 1969, the Continuity IRA claims to be the legitimate continuation of the ' Irish Republican Army ' or Óglaigh na hÉireann.

In February 2006, the Independent Monitoring Commission claimed in a report on paramilitary activity that two groups, styling themselves as Saoirse na hÉireann and Óglaigh na hÉireann, had been formed after a split in the Continuity IRA.

Following the signing in 1921 of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which ended the War of Independence, a split occurred within the IRA.

The IRA campaign can broadly be split into three phases.

These issues were the cause of a split in the IRA and ultimately, the Irish Civil War.

When, at the December 1969 IRA convention and the January 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis the delegates voted to participate in the Dublin ( Leinster House ), Belfast ( Stormont ) and London ( Westminster ) parliaments, the organizations split.

The split in Sinn Féin gradually deepened and the majority of the IRA hardened against accepting anything less than a full republic.

When the majority of IRA and Sinn Féin decided to abandon abstentionism in the 1969 – 70 split, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill sought and secured Maguire's recognition of the Provisional IRA as the legitimate successor to the 1938 Army Council.

Likewise in the aftermath of the 1986 split in the Republican Movement, Maguire signed a statement in 1986 but was issued posthumously in 1996, he conferred this " legitimacy " on the Army Council of the Continuity IRA ( who provided a firing party at Maguire's funeral in 1993 ).

After the Troubles broke out in Northern Ireland in 1969, the IRA and Sinn Féin both split over abstentionism and the " left-wing " faction's " extreme socialism " politics.

This increasing political divergence led to a formal split at the 1969 IRA Convention, held in December.

The split resulted from a vote at the first IRA Convention where a two-thirds majority voted that Republicans should take their seats if elected to the British, Irish or Northern Ireland Parliaments.

Accounts at that time suggest that the IRA split roughly in half, with those loyal to the Cathal Goulding led " Official IRA " prominent in some areas while the Provisional IRA were prominent in other areas.

Initially there was much confusion among republicans on the ground, Martin McGuinness for example, joined the Official IRA in 1970, unaware that there had been a split and only later joined the Provisionals.

As a result of these limits to the Free State's sovereignty, and because the Treaty dismantled the Republic declared by nationalists in 1918, the Sinn Féin movement, the Dáil and the IRA were all deeply split over whether to accept the Treaty.

On 21 January 1994, on the 75th anniversary of the First Dáil Éireann, Continuity IRA volunteers offered a " final salute " to Tom Maguire by firing over his grave, and a public statement and a photo were published in Saoirse Irish Freedom.

However, because of the localised and irregular character of the war, they were only able to exert limited control over local IRA commanders such as Tom Barry, Liam Lynch in Cork and Seán Mac Eoin in Longford.

Moreover, almost 5, 000 IRA men had been imprisoned or interned and over 500 killed.

In County Cork between 1920 and 1923 the IRA shot over 200 civilians of whom over 70 ( or 36 %) were Protestants: five times the percentage of Protestants in the civilian population.

They continued to recruit and train volunteers, with the result that the IRA had increased its number to over 72, 000 men by early 1922.

The IRA leadership was deeply divided over the decision by the Dáil to ratify the Treaty.

They called for the IRA to withdraw from the authority of the Dáil and to entrust the IRA Executive with control over the army.

He went on to say that " we repudiate the Dáil … We will set up an Executive which will issue orders to the IRA all over the country.

On 28 March, the ( anti-Treaty ) IRA Executive issued statement stating that Minister of Defence ( Richard Mulcahy ) and the Chief-of-Staff ( Eoin O ' Duffy ) no longer exercised any control over the IRA.

About 100 Irish Republican Army ( IRA ) volunteers escape an attempt by over 1, 300 British forces to encircle them.

Tánaiste Mary Harney said no deal had been done with Sinn Féin or the IRA over the three's return to Ireland adding that the Irish government would consider any request from the Colombian authorities for their extradition.

Sure enough, Fergus cannot bring himself to shoot the fleeing Jody in the back, but Jody is instead accidentally run over and killed by British armoured personnel carriers as they suddenly move in to assault the IRA safehouse.

The group is parodied in Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist ( 1985 ), in which a group of naive, young, communist squatters splits over whether or not to join the IRA.

* February 8 – An IRA ceasefire ends with a half-tonne bomb in London's Canary Wharf District, killing 2 and causing over £ 85 million worth of damage.

* June 15 – In Manchester, UK, a massive IRA bomb injures over 200 people and devastates a large part of the city centre.

** Milltown Cemetery Attack: During the funeral of three Provisional IRA members in Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Ulster Defence Association ( UDA ) member Michael Stone attacked the crowd with grenades and pistols, killing three and wounding over sixty.

In 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army ( IRA ) indicated that its armed campaign was over and that it is now exclusively committed to democratic politics.

During the Troubles, over 300 members of the RUC were killed and almost 9, 000 injured in paramilitary assassinations or attacks, mostly by the Provisional IRA, which made the RUC ( in 1983 ) the most dangerous police force in the world of which to be a member.

The Civil War started on 28 June 1922, and the IRA was decisively defeated in the field over the following two months, being largely pinned back to Munster.

The sanguineous religious / political conflict known as " The Troubles " had been raging across Northern Ireland for over five years by this stage, and many young men such as Wright would be swept up in the maelstrom of violence as the Provisional IRA ramped up its bombing campaign and sectarian killings continued to escalate.

Most notably the Official IRA company in the Lower Falls, led by Joe McCann, held off an incursion into the area by over 600 British troops.

During the Irish Civil War ( 1922 – 23 ), most of the IRA units in Cork sided against the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, most of the Kerry IRA units opposed the settlement.

Just prior to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in March 1922, the Freeman's Journal printing machinery was destroyed by Anti-Treaty IRA men under Rory O ' Connor for its support of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

* Irish Republican Army ( 1922 – 62 ) A split from the " old " IRA that opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty that solidified the partition of Ireland following the Irish War of Independence.

Under the guidance of figures such as Cathal Goulding and Sean Garland, the leadership of both Sinn Féin and the IRA sought to shift their emphasis away from the traditional republican goal of a 32 County Irish Republic redeemed ( since Republicans regard the republic declared in 1916 as still in existence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty as invalid ) by military action and concentrate more on socialism and civil rights related activities.

Southern Ireland never became a functioning political entity, and, following a truce between the IRA and the British beginning on 11 July 1921, a political settlement was reached in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921.

Though many across the country were unhappy with the Anglo-Irish Treaty ( since, during the war, the IRA had fought for independence for all Ireland and for a republic, not a partitioned dominion under the British crown ), some republicans were satisfied that the Treaty was the best that could be achieved at the time.

In 1920 Percival served in Ireland against the Irish Republican Army ( IRA ) during the Anglo-Irish War, first as a company commander and later the intelligence officer of the 1st Battalion of the Essex Regiment, in Kinsale, County Cork.

Boland opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty along with de Valera, and in the ensuing Irish Civil War, he sided with the Anti-Treaty IRA.

In Cork, Lynch re-organised the Irish Volunteers-the paramilitary organisation that became the Irish Republican Army-in 1919, becoming commandant of the Cork No. 2 Brigade of the IRA during the guerrilla Anglo-Irish War.

The Army also took part in operations in Ireland against the IRA during the Anglo-Irish War.

Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Breen joined the Anti-Treaty IRA in the unsuccessful civil war against his former comrades in arms.

In principle, the IRA wished to overthrow both " partitionist " states in Ireland, both Northern Ireland and the government in Dublin, both of which it deemed to be illegitimate entities, imposed by Britain at the time of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922.

Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921, the IRA in the 26 counties that were to become the Irish Free State split between supporters and opponents of the Treaty.

The signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty by the Irish delegation in London caused an angry reaction among the more radical elements in Sinn Féin and in the IRA.