The original Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), often now referred to as the "old IRA", was raised in 1917 from members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, later reinforced by Irishmen, formerly in the British Army in World War I, who returned to Ireland to fight against Britain in the Irish War of Independence. In Irish law,[2] this IRA was the army of the revolutionary Irish Republic as declared by its parliament, Dáil Éireann, in 1919.
