It's an almost pointless attack. NI is one of the few examples of a counter insurgency successfully beaten. Not by force of arms, but by dragging out the stalemate long enough for the economy and civil structure to gain traction. A lot of the splinter groups that devolved from the IRA are so far away, ideologically speaking, from the original issue that they will not be pacified by anything other than the passage of time as some of the doctrine they are peddling such as obscure Maoism, falangism and the like, only exists in the university courses that people take because they need that one last credit.
We have some relatives in Antrim and the last time we saw them a few years back their general feeling was that they (as Protestants) were extremely embarassed that they hadn't been able to get over themselves for so long and wondered how much of their life they had wasted being angry. That sort of sentiment is what these new murders are butting up against.
As well, one of the few useful side-products of the otherwise banal war on terror, is that the Europeans are looking out and not in. I was at a presentation in Brussels a while back that suggested, with evidence, that many of the indigenous terror groups in Europe like the PIRA, ETA, RAF (they still exist oddly enough) are unable to wrench the public attention away from the the notion that radical Islam is the main battle. As such, they are pursued by police as if they were common criminals (which they are) which has served to diminish their relevance.
The bottom line is that nobody in any part of Ireland really wants to see the Troubles redux.