Dublin's role in IRA split now causing embarassment

A group of IRA victims organized by  unionist south Armagh activist Willie Frazer has been attempting, rather unsuccessfully, to get the Irish government to apologize for the the Kingsmills massacre in January 1976, when an IRA gang stopped a van full of workers and lined them up and shot them killing ten. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said that terrible as it was, it was the work of the IRA and not Dublin. Kenny is the leader of the Fine Gael party, which never had any time for the IRA or violent republicanism. But the dominant Fianna Fail party was full of "sneaking regarders" (secret admirers) of the IRA such as former Taoiseach Charles Haughey, former Agriculture Minister (1966-70) Neil Blaney, and former Local Government Minister (1966-70) Kevin Boland who helped create the Provisional IRA in 1969-70.

New IRA merger doesn't increast threat say experts

On Thursday dissident Republican activists in Northern Ireland announced the creation of a new organization that they are calling the IRA from the merger of three smaller organizations: the Real IRA, the largest of the various dissident groups; Republican Action Against Drugs, a republican vigilante group in Derry; and a group of independent republican activists who have carried out a number of terror attacks in the last decade.  But most analysts seem to feel that by centralizing the new group simply presents a juicier target for counter-intelligence efforts. Why is this?