Alright, so these people might exist. I doubt they're tied to OC in any significant way though. In this day and age, people involved in OC tend to stick out. If they're just wannabes, I could understand that. If they're anything more than that, I can't see how they don't end up in a newspaper or on George Anastasia's radar.

I don't buy the IRA connections either. There's not much of an IRA around these days. The Provisionals (what most people mean when they say the IRA) have disarmed. Most of the top guys are involved in community jobs, paid for by UK gov't money. The remaining groups that haven't disarmed are the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, and the INLA (Irish National Liberation Army). For the most part, they act like OC does in the US. Shake down businesses, smuggle goods over the border, counterfeit goods, etc. They say they don't allow drugs in the community but I doubt that. They don't allow other dealers in their community but they'll allow theirs.

As far as US-IRA connections, they were never too deep. They did a lot of fundraising through NORAID, for sure. And some guns crossed the Atlantic. A lot of that was done by IRA operatives though, not Irish gangs. The Winter Hill gang did a one time thing sending over some guns. For the most part, though, the PIRA got the vast majority of its guns and bombs from Libya.