Despite the fact that Michael Collins – the de facto leader of the IRA – had negotiated the Treaty, many IRA officers were against it.

* In July 1972, during a short-lived ceasefire, an IRA delegation that included Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness held talks in a house in Cheyne Walk with a British government team led by NI Secretary William Whitelaw.

Many IRA officers interpreted the truce only as a temporary break in fighting.

* The IRA agreed to a truce in 1994.

Furthermore, as one of the negotiators, Michael Collins, later admitted ( and he was in a position to know, given his role in the independence war ), the IRA at the time of the truce was weeks, if not days, from collapse, with a chronic shortage of ammunition.

Violence between the IRA and the British was ended in July 1921, but nine men, four British soldiers and five IRA men, were killed in a shootout in Castleisland on the day of the truce itself, indicating the bitterness of the conflict in Kerry.

Despite the truce, Costello was shot dead as he sat in his car on the North Strand Road in Dublin on 5 October 1977 by a member of the Official IRA, Jim Flynn who happened to be in the area at the time.

The two IRA factions arranged a truce between them after the OIRA killing of Provisional activist, and Belfast brigade D-Company commander, Charlie Hughes ( a cousin of the well known Republican Brendan Hughes ).

While the truce was welcomed by enthusiastic crowds, and some arrangement beyond the Home Rule Act 1920 provisions was in prospect, it was also evident that the IRA military campaign had not secured the 32-county republic claimed by the Dáil, and that a separate government in Northern Ireland was now functioning.

After further failed talks in December 1920, the guerrilla conflict was brought to an end in July 1921, with a truce agreed between the IRA and the British.

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.

On 10 February 1975, the IRA Army Council, which may have included Ó Brádaigh, unanimously endorsed an open-ended cessation of IRA " hostilities against Crown forces ", which became known as the 1975 truce.

It is argued by some that by the time the truce collapsed in late 1975 the Provisional IRA had been severely weakened.

In addition, after a truce was declared in July 1921, the local IRA killed a number of alleged informers.

The IRA had been expanded hugely in 1922, from perhaps 15, 000 men before the truce with the British in July 1921, to over 72, 000 by November 1922.

On 10 February 1975, the Provisional IRA and British government entered into a truce and re-started negotiations.

Some Provisionals wanted no part of the truce, while British commanders resented being told to stop their operations against the IRA just when — they claimed — they had the Provisionals on the run.

The security forces boosted their intelligence offensive during the truce and thoroughly infiltrated the IRA.

They hoped to force the IRA to retaliate and thus hasten an end to the truce.

The Black and Tans acted with the Auxiliaries in the government's attempts to break the IRA.

The Black and Tans were not subject to strict discipline in their early months in Ireland and as a result, their deaths at the hands of the IRA in 1920 were often repaid with arbitrary reprisals against the civilian population.

The " Cogadh na Saoirse " medal, awarded since 1941 by the Irish government to IRA veterans of the War of Independence, bears a ribbon with two vertical stripes in black and tan.

Provisional IRA activity also increased across Northern Ireland with thirty British soldiers being killed in the remaining months of 1971, in contrast to the ten soldiers killed during the pre-internment period of the year.

The meeting, which like all such meetings was secret, was convened to discuss among other resolutions, the articles of the Provisional IRA constitution which dealt with abstentionism, its opposition to the taking of seats in Dáil Éireann.

Security sources in Ireland have expressed the suspicion that, in cooperation with the RIRA, the Continuity IRA may have acquired arms and material from the Balkans.

The village was only 12 miles away from the border with Northern Ireland and near an area known to be used as a cross-border refuge by IRA members.

While the Rising and its leaders continued to be venerated by Irish republicans — including members and supporters of the Provisional IRA and the modern Sinn Féin — with murals in republican areas of Belfast and other towns celebrating the actions of Pearse and his comrades, and a number of parades held annually in remembrance of the Rising, the Irish government discontinued its annual parade in Dublin in the early 1970s, and in 1976 it took the unprecedented step of proscribing ( under the Offences against the State Act ) a 1916 commemoration ceremony at the GPO organised by Sinn Féin and the Republican commemoration Committee.

The anti-treaty IRA fought a civil war with their former comrades in 1922 – 23, with the intention of creating a fully independent all-Ireland republic.

This convention, that subsequently became known as an IRA convention, was called to coincide with the Sinn Féin party conference.

In practice, the IRA was commanded by Collins, with Richard Mulcahy as second in command.

The area had a Protestant and Unionist majority and IRA actions were responded to with reprisals against the Catholic population, including killings ( such as the McMahon Murders ) and the burning of many homes – as on Belfast's Bloody Sunday.

In April 1921, the IRA was again reorganised, in line with the Dáil's endorsement of its actions, along the lines of a regular army.

It has been estimated that the IRA had only about 3, 000 rifles ( mostly captured from the British ) during the war, with a larger number of shotguns and pistols.

As he feared, the destruction proved a pyrrhic victory for the Republic, with so many IRA men killed or captured that the IRA in Dublin suffered a severe blow.

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.

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

This was the first unit of the IRA to break with the pro-Treaty government.

Major opened talks with the Provisional Irish Republican Army ( IRA ) upon taking office.

When he declared to the House of Commons in November 1993 that " to sit down and talk with Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA ... would turn my stomach ", Sinn Féin gave the media an outline of the secret talks indeed held regularly since that February.

The Downing Street Declaration was issued on 15 December 1993 by Major and Albert Reynolds, the Irish Taoiseach, with whom he had a friendly relationship: an IRA ceasefire followed in 1994.

Set in Dublin, Ireland, the film tells the true-life story of the charismatic leader of a gang of thieves, Martin Cahill, at odds with both the police and the IRA.