Well put.
There were two branches of the IRA, the Official IRA (straight Marxists) and the Provisional IRA (or ‘Provos’) who ran their rivals right out of business. The Provos had (or perhaps still have) an inner committee of a dozen or fewer which would determine what violence, murders, and threats would be used to dispose of rivals; this included rivals within the Provos, some of whom were killed, some of whom fled, mostly to the US. Provos trained with Islamofascist terrorists in Libya and elsewhere, and conducted both random acts of public terror (like the Omagh bombing) or terrorized specific victims (threats, kneecapping) just like the criminal gang that they are.
I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom. I shall not settle until I achieve liberation of my country, until Ireland becomes a sovereign, independent socialist republic.
— Sands in the “Republican News”, 12/16/78