Following the military failure of the Easter Rising in 1916, the Irish Republican Army used a number of guerrilla tactics involving both urban guerrilla warfare and flying columns in the countryside during the Irish war of Independence of 1919 to 1922. The IRA guerrilla was of considerable intensity in parts of the country, most notably Dublin and in areas such as County Cork, Kerry and Mayo. Despite this, the Irish fighters were never in a position to either hold territory or take on British forces in a conventional manner.

By mid-1921, the military and political costs of maintaining the British security forces in Ireland eventually proved too heavy for the British government. In July 1921, the UK government agreed to a truce with the IRA and agreed to meet representatives of the Irish First Dail. Negotiations led to a settlement, the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Guerrilla warfare continued to be deployed and improved upon during the tumultuous years of the Irish Civil War.

This is a recording of a talk delivered by Joe Connell in September 2018 for Tallaght Historical Society.