It always escalates, trouble has flared up and down over the last 2.5 decades since the peace process.
There will never be a return to what came before, for many reasons. Not least because, regardless of how you view some of their methods the PIRA came about through the sheer inequality faced for catholics in the north. The sheer systematic discrimination is hard for anyone on GB to understand given the time period it occurred. Support was high because there was a genuine need for change, and a large part of the population that truly had little left to lose.
The money that came in to fund the IRA from outside meant it was actually an incredibly well oiled machine compared to the loyalist paramilitaries.
While no united Ireland, many of the IRA’s goals have been achieved in a way. NI is not entirely under British rule, equal rights have been realised for catholics in terms of jobs, housing and the vote.
What would the goals be from a new conflict?
Who would the divide be between?
The people in NI lived through a genuine warfare, blockades in the street, armed patrols through the streets, death and destruction through bombings, tit for tat shootings, being burned from their homes, crippling poverty, punishment shootings, paramilitary control all being a daily occurrence, and at the same time they lived normal lives along side it going to school, getting married, family life, going to work.
There’s no genuine appetite in NI for a return to anything like the violence we have already endured.