The answer was he probably worked throughout the period. The IRA was an irregular force; De Valera’s wish for them to wear uniform and conduct operations like the Boers in the Boer War was dismissed out of hand by the pragmatic Collins.

While in principle there were 100,000 members of the IRA, Collins himself estimated that only about 15,000 were involved in actual fighting and rarely ever more than a few thousand at any given time.

Units were irregular forces who would come together, stage attacks, and then disperse back to civilian roles. Much depended upon the organisational skills of local commanders.

In Cork the West Cork Brigade famously led the retaliation to the Bloody Sunday massacre with Kilmichael Ambush in November 1918. This saw several teams of IRA fighters in civilian clothes led by Tom Barry organise a successful ambush on two trucks carrying auxiliary policemen, leaving 3 IRA members and 17 police officers dead.

As a dock worker he would probably have been involved in the boycott of goods designed to stymie British resupply; the ostracisation of RIC officers and the many passive resistance tactics employed that demoralised the police in Ireland.

Cork was however a hotbed of support for the rebellion; and also for British retaliation. A few days before the above ambush a Black and Tan has thrown a grenade into a meeting of IRA supporters in Cork, killing three and injuring many others. After the above ambush, the authorities issued a 10pm curfew on Cork (and surrounding counties) and each night around 1,000 soldiers would pour out of the barracks and take control of the city.

On December 11th the IRA carried out a retaliatory Ambush at Dillon’s Cross and this led to the Black and Tans starting a series of fires in Cork city, preventing firemen from dealing with them and causing what is known as ‘The Burning of Cork’.

As a dock worker I believe he would have not been rendered jobless by this but if he lived in one of the houses burned down, would have been made homeless.

The insurgency carried on for some months afterwards; due to internment and a shortage of ammunition, several, including Collins, were worried that if it carried on much longer the IRA campaign would fade out. Several ambushes had failed, and while they had nominally gained control over large portions of the Irish countryside, they had only engaged in police and irregular British forces, with limited fighting against full blown British military.

It was for this reason these elements within the IRA agreed to a negotiated Truce with Britain leading eventually to the peace settlement.

In time this would lead to the Civil War, wherein Cork was one of the bastions of anti-Treaty fighters but was taken by the Free State easily. The resulting insurgency saw that County Cork was also where Micheal Collins was ambushed and killed.

I won’t ask which side your grandfather was on during said conflict as it is a bone of contention still.

If you want more information on Cork during the War of Independence may I suggest this as a starting place: http://homepage.eircom.net/~corkcounty/index.html

And this for an introduction into the losses in the Civil War: http://www.theirishstory.com/2019/07/14/casualties-of-the-irish-civil-war-in-county-cork/#.Xb8itpanyaN

Hope that helps.