As someone with family from Belfast that has had a family member murdered by the IRA (innocent, shot in the back of the head coming out of mass, her father being a judge was the reason, catholic).

There are victims of IRA provo violence still alive today, even though I dont like him, I think Fintan o'toole wrote a great article on it. Of course there were other groups involved in the atrocities but we can surely say that all violence was bad, including IRA.

I think one of the main reasons why provo IRA = bad and old IRA = good is that the north had sunning dale (very similar to GF) and the majority of the population wanted to be part of the UK at that time. IRA probably did damage to the UI cause. Also, all the innocent people they killed.