I don’t think the protestant paramilitaries will last very long, but when a group is cornered they will either fight or roll over. The paramilitaries have shown that they will fight; and the violence that they have inflicted in the past is greater than anything the IRA ever did, albeit they had police and British military backing and that won’t exist to the same degree this next time around.
This is not a dead issue. As a result, quite a lot of people could get very dead if things start to turn nasty again. As evidence...
The Ulster Covenant BEING CONVINCED in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V., humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognize its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names. And further, we individually declare that we have not already signed this Covenant.The Declaration (for women) We, whose names are underwritten, women of Ulster, and loyal subjects of our gracious King, being firmly persuaded that Home Rule would be disastrous to our Country, desire to associate ourselves with the men of Ulster in their uncompromising opposition to the Home Rule Bill now before Parliament, whereby it is proposed to drive Ulster out of her cherished place in the Constitution of the United Kingdom, and to place her under the domination and control of a Parliament in Ireland. Praying that from this calamity God will save Ireland, we here to subscribe our names.
Nearly half a million Irish people signed that declaration when the British Parliament voted to grant independence (home rule) to Ireland in 1912-3. Some of them signed it in their own blood. One of the few good things about WWI is that it forestalled a full scale civil war in Ireland.