MGOH,

""Nothing get done that isn't sanctioned" - so if the "command HQ" far away is destroyed everyone packs up and goes home for tea?"

No it doesn't happen like that Kevin. What does happen is that things go quiet until until the command structure re-groups and reforms.

"The Irish Republic was never "a safe operational base" for the IRA, in the sense that they could operate there in the open or without difficulty."

LOL at that one Kevin - you are of course joking!!! I included the last part, because, the IRA was declared an illegal organisation in South long before it was declared an illegal organisation by the British. Having said that, you tell me Kevin - for arguements sake, hypothetically, you as a member of that organisation want to establish an arsenal, train your people to use it, and create a command structure - you have the choice of setting it up on one side of the border where you have an extremely active internal security presence, well equipped, well trained, with assets capable of aerial reconnaisance, air-mobility and the potential to put into the field men in their thousands. On the other hand you could set up on the other side of that border where you have a much reduced, minimal, active internal security effort - a place where the resources available to the Government are a fraction of what you would face across the border - a place where emotionally "a-blind-eye" is more than likely to be turned to your efforts and activities - a place where it is much easier to run in the weapons and explosives you need - a place where the population density is less so that your activities stand a better chance of going on unreported if not unnoticed. And you say that the IRA opted for the former!!!

"It's fairly clear that arms dumps were sited, and training carried on in Northern Ireland, or for that matter in England, when that was felt to be appropriate."

I have no doubt you are correct to a limited extent - but arms finds in the North have always been tiny compared to those arms caches discovered in the South. The arms dumps and training you refer to above can be accurately described as extremely local "ready-use" stores - their main dumps and training areas have always been in the South - and you know that as well as I do Kevin.