The Irish Republican Army
(IRA) (Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann) was a military
organisation descended from the Irish Volunteers in
April 1916 and which was recognised in 1919 by Dáil Éireann (its elected assembly) as the
legitimate army of the unilaterally declared Irish
Republic, the Irish state proclaimed in the Easter
Rising in 1916 and reaffirmed by the Dáil in January 1919. In
Irish, it was known as Óglaigh na
hÉireann.
Though a series of organisations later claimed to be a
continuation of the IRA from the 1920s to today, many Irish people
disagree with these claims. After the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, members of the IRA who
supported the Treaty formed the nucleus of the National Army founded by IRA leader Michael
Collins in 1922. While the anti-Treaty IRA continued to exist
after its defeat in the Irish Civil War, by the
late 1930s it had lost most of the legitimacy with which most
supporters of the Republican side initially regarded it. A small
minority of Irish people accepts later claimants to the name as the
political heirs of the original Irish Republican Army, though none
had their claims accepted by Dáil Éireann.
To distinguish between the army of the Irish Republic, and later
claimants to the name, the original army recognised by the Dáil is
sometimes called the Old IRA
