Peace, peace has broken out in Ireland a long time ago! The IRA has not been on campaign for years and years.

There have been "punishment beatings" - a crude method of controlling such crimes as "joyriding" (car theft followed by racing the car around the streets then burning it out), and drug dealing. Punishment beatings are when a bunch of thugs force their way into the home of a teenager and beat him or her with baseball bats, nail-spiked clubs and so on.

These thugs are generally republicans; this is the method of policing they choose in rough areas where the police are considered to be outsiders.

Asked about this, Northern republicans tend to say "Well, what can you do - crime has to be controlled some way in rough areas."

And there is absolutely no way that the police in their current form - seen by many/most republicans in the North as a foreign, enemy force committed to serve the Unionists - are going to be called to help.

The history of the police in the North includes many instances of police officers leaking information to loyalist murderers, at the very least. In some cases the police have themselves murdered republicans.

So this one issue - the punishment beatings - is the most difficult facing republicans in the North of Ireland. They must either turn to trusting the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland, formerly the RUC, an overwhelmingly Protestant and unionist force) or learn to police republican areas through positive action to offer choices to rebellious youths, rather than violence.

Considering that many of the people who've grown up with the IRA are themselves from an impoverished background not rich in choices, this is going to be difficult.