I don’t know much about Ireland, how severe is the fighting and terrorism over there? Is it just a handful of extremists targeting a small part of ireland or is it bigger than this.
Shouldn’t this be in GQ or IMHO?
At the moment the peace process is going well. Can’t think of a terrorist attack in the last 5 years. Last I heard the Real IRA were to hand in their weapons at Christmas and there are talks of some type of unification in governing the whole of Ireland.
Whoa. There is some serious misinformation in your post.
First of all, there have been a number of “terrorist attacks” in the last five years. On the loyalist (pro-British) side these have essentially all been either sectarian attacks against individual Catholics or people presumed to be Catholic, or the results of internecine feuds. There have been bombs as well, but a lot of them unexploded and no real damage. On the nationalist (pro-Irish) side there have been a number of bombs, all of them small and only one that I can remember causing any deaths.
The Real IRA are not handing in any weapons. They are not on ceasefire. You’re confusing them with the Provisional IRA, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be handing in (any more) weapons anytime soon either. At the moment the peace process is stalled due to the DUP (largest unionist party) saying they won’t agree to any proposal which can’t be used to “humiliate” (their words) republicans.
And unless you’re privy to the details of the current proposal (which is being kept secret for now), there aren’t any new plans for a unified government on the table. A number of all-Ireland institutions were set up under the Good Friday Agreement, but these have been in place for several years. Nationalists would like to see the British and Irish governments insist on joint authority if the current talks collapse but it hasn’t been mooted as a possibility by either government at this point.
Now getting back to the OP (if he’s still reading this :)), these days what violence there is is confined to the six northeastern most counties of Ireland (the area currently known as Northern Ireland). For the most part, that has been the case since the onset of the “Troubles” in the late '60s. However, there were a number of loyalist bombs in the south in the early-mid 1970s, an attempted loyalist bombing which resulted in the shooting death of an IRA volunteer in Dublin in 1994, and a number of other killings related to the conflict in the years inbetween.
Me = :wally
sorry.