the IRA existed for so long as an outlaw organization that they cannot go back.
good friends of my parents moved here from northern ireland because a member of the IRA told them, 'your daughter is going to be working for us on the streets'.  they fled.  that was in the 70s, a wild time for international terror, in many ways more crazy then now - interpol etc. didn't have the resources / computers it does now, lots of mercs in africa and south america, lots of people hiding out.
look at that recent burglary, december 22nd in belfast i believe, and how some of its aftershocks are rippling through the old resistance movement:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...488384,00.html
more than likely that some of the bank robbers were ex-IRA or ex-Ullster unionists or something, i mean you live cloak-and-dagger for your adult life and then are told to go home and work at the bakery?