The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is any of several armed movements in Ireland in the 20th and 21st centuries dedicated to Irish republicanism, the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic.The first known use of the term "Irish Republican Army" occurred in the Fenian raids on Canada in the 1860s. The original Irish Republican Army formed by 1917 from those Irish Volunteers who refused to enlist in the British Army during World War I.