WHEN I was young the IRA was a historic legend.
Sixty years ago I was 15 years old and deeply impressed by the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Easter Rising.
That Rising, as we called it, was a revolutionary insurgency in Dublin against British rule in Ireland.
It was put down within a week, leaving much of the inner city in rubble.
There was no IRA then, but two years later, against the backdrop of the First World War and the threat of conscription, the Sinn Féin party took the majority vote in a general election and declared Ireland an independent republic.
And a republic needs an army...
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