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Founding
Founding of Ireland
country in Northwestern Europe
- 1177 – 1937
- Dublin
- Europe
Founding
country in Northwestern Europe
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Ireland (Irish: Éire [ˈeːɾʲə] ⓘ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann), is a country in Northwestern Europe. It consists of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland, with a population of about 5.4 million. Its capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island, with a population of over 1.5 million. The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south-east and the Irish Sea to the east. It is a unitary, parliamentary republic. The legislature, the Oireachtas, consists of a lower house, Dáil Éireann; an upper house, Seanad Éireann; and an elected president (Uachtarán) who serves as the largely ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the Taoiseach (prime minister, lit. 'chief'), elected by the Dáil and appointed by the president, who appoints other government ministers.
The Irish Free State was created with Dominion status in 1922, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In 1937, a new constitution was adopted, in which the state was named "Ireland" and effectively became a republic, with an elected non-executive president. It was officially declared a republic in 1949, following The Republic of Ireland Act 1948. Ireland became a member of the United Nations in 1955. It joined the European Communities (EC), the predecessor of the European Union (EU), in 1973. The state had no formal relations with Northern Ireland for most of the 20th century, but the 1980s and 1990s saw the British and Irish governments working with Northern Irish parties to resolve the conflict that had become known as the Troubles. Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the Irish government and Northern Irish government have co-operated on a number of policy areas under the North/South Ministerial Council created by the Agreement.
Ireland is a developed country with a quality of life ranked sixth in the world by the 2024 Human Development Index Report adjusted for inequality. It also ranks highly in healthcare, economic freedom and freedom of the press. According to the Global Peace Index, Ireland was the second most peaceful country worldwide in 2024.
It is a member of the EU and a founding member of the Council of Europe and the OECD. The Irish government has followed a policy of military neutrality through non-alignment since before World War II, and the country is consequently not a member of NATO, although it is a member of the Partnership for Peace and certain aspects of PESCO. Ireland's economy is advanced, with one of Europe's major financial hubs being centred on Dublin. It ranks among the top five wealthiest countries in the world in terms of both GDP and GNI per capita. After joining the EC, the country's government enacted a series of liberal economic policies that helped to boost economic growth between 1995 and 2007, a time now often referred to as the Celtic Tiger period. A recession and reversal in growth then followed during the Great Recession, which was exacerbated by the bursting of the Irish property bubble. The Great Recession lasted until 2014, and was followed by a new period of strong economic growth.
The names Ireland and Éire both derive from Old Irish Ériu, which in turn comes from Proto-Celtic ɸīweriyū meaning "fertile soil". The Classical Latin name for the island of Ireland, Ivernia, also comes from this same root, and it remains a popular, poetic synonym for Ireland to this day (usually respelled "Hibernia", under the influence of hibernum, the Latin word for "winter").
The state created in 1922, comprising 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, was "styled and known as the Irish Free State" (Saorstát Éireann). The Constitution of Ireland, adopted in 1937, says that "the name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland". Section 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 states, "It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland." The 1948 Act does not name the state "Republic of Ireland", because to have done so would have put it in conflict with the Constitution.
The government of the United Kingdom used the name "Eire" (without the diacritic) and, from 1949, "Republic of Ireland", for the state. It was not until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, when the state dropped its claim to Northern Ireland, that it began calling the state "Ireland".
The state is also informally called "the Republic", "Southern Ireland" or "the South"; especially when distinguishing the state from the island or when discussing Northern Ireland ("the North"). Irish republicans reserve the name "Ireland" for the whole island and often refer to the state as "the Free State", "the 26 Counties", or "the South of Ireland". This is a "response to the partitionist view [...] that Ireland stops at the border".
From the Act of Union on 1 January 1801, until 6 December 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island's population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and disease and another 1.5 million emigrated, mostly to the United States. This set the pattern of emigration for the century to come, resulting in constant population decline up to the 1960s.
From 1874, and particularly under Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence. This was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League, which won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts, and secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy. These led to "grass-roots" control of national affairs, under the Local Government Act 1898, that had been in the hands of landlord-dominated grand juries of the Protestant Ascendancy.
Home Rule seemed certain when the Parliament Act 1911 abolished the veto of the House of Lords, and John Redmond secured the Third Home Rule Act in 1914. However, the Unionist movement had been growing since 1886 among Irish Protestants after the introduction of the first home rule bill, fearing discrimination and loss of economic and social privileges if Irish Catholics achieved real political power. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unionism was particularly strong in parts of Ulster, where industrialisation was more common in contrast to the more agrarian rest of the island, and where the Protestant population was more prominent, with a majority in four counties. Under the leadership of the Dublin-born Sir Edward Carson of the Irish Unionist Party and the Ulsterman Sir James Craig of the Ulster Unionist Party, unionists became strongly militant, forming Ulster Volunteers in order to oppose "the Coercion of Ulster". After the Home Rule Bill passed parliament in May 1914, to avoid rebellion with Ulster, the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith introduced an Amending Bill reluctantly conceded to by the Irish Party leadership. This provided for the temporary exclusion of Ulster from the workings of the bill for a trial period of six years, with an as yet undecided new set of measures to be introduced for the area to be temporarily excluded.
Though it received the Royal Assent and was placed on the statute books in 1914, the implementation of the Third Home Rule Act was suspended until after the First World War which defused the threat of civil war in Ireland. With the hope of ensuring the implementation of the Act at the end of the war through Ireland's engagement in the war, Redmond and the Irish National Volunteers supported the UK and its Allies. 175,000 men joined Irish regiments of the 10th (Irish) and 16th (Irish) divisions of the New British Army, while Unionists joined the 36th (Ulster) divisions.
The remainder of the Irish Volunteers, who refused Redmond and opposed any support of the UK, launched an armed insurrection against British rule in the 1916 Easter Rising, together with the Irish Citizen Army and other militant Irish nationalist groups. This commenced on 24 April 1916 with the Proclamation of the Republic. After a week of heavy fighting, primarily in Dublin, the surviving rebels were forced to surrender their positions. The majority were imprisoned, with fifteen of the prisoners (including most of the leaders and all of the Proclamation signatories) executed for taking part in armed rebellion and waging war against the British Crown, court-martialed under the Defence of the Realm Act. This included Patrick Pearse, the Commander-in-Chief of the Irish rebel forces, and James Connolly, socialist and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union and both the Irish and Scottish Labour movements. The Rising, and the executions and arrests, together with the Conscription Crisis of 1918, had the effect of changing public opinion in Ireland against the British Government.
In January 1919, after the December 1918 general election, 73 of Ireland's 105 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected were Sinn Féin members who were elected on a platform of abstentionism from the British House of Commons. In January 1919, they set up an Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann. This First Dáil issued a declaration of independence and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The declaration was mainly a restatement of the 1916 Proclamation with the additional provision that Ireland was no longer a part of the United Kingdom. The Irish Republic's Ministry of Dáil Éireann sent a delegation under Ceann Comhairle (Head of Council, or Speaker, of the Dáil) Seán T. O'Kelly to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but it was not admitted.
After the War of Independence and truce called in July 1921, representatives of the British government and the five Irish treaty delegates, led by Arthur Griffith, Robert Barton and Michael Collins, negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London from 11 October to 6 December 1921. The Irish delegates set up headquarters at Hans Place in Knightsbridge, and it was here in private discussions that the decision was taken on 5 December to recommend the treaty to Dáil Éireann. On 7 January 1922, the Second Dáil ratified the Treaty by 64 votes to 57.
In accordance with the treaty, on 6 December 1922 the entire island of Ireland became a self-governing Dominion called the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann). Under the Constitution of the Irish Free State, the Parliament of Northern Ireland had the option to leave the Irish Free State one month later and return to the United Kingdom. During the intervening period, the powers of the Parliament of the Irish Free State and Executive Council of the Irish Free State did not extend to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland exercised its right under the treaty to leave the new Dominion and rejoined the United Kingdom on 8 December 1922. It did so by making an address to the King requesting, "that the powers of the Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland." The Irish Free State was a constitutional monarchy sharing a monarch with the United Kingdom and other Dominions of the British Commonwealth. The country had a governor-general (representing the monarch), a bicameral parliament, a cabinet called the "Executive Council", and a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council.
The Irish Civil War (June 1922 – May 1923) was the consequence of the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the creation of the Irish Free State. Anti-treaty forces, led by Éamon de Valera, objected to the fact that acceptance of the treaty abolished the Irish Republic of 1919 to which they had sworn loyalty, arguing in the face of public support for the settlement that the "people have no right to do wrong". They objected most to the fact that the state would remain part of the British Empire and that members of the Free State Parliament would have to swear what the anti-treaty side saw as an oath of fidelity to the British king. Pro-treaty forces, led by Michael Collins, argued that the treaty gave "not the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire to and develop, but the freedom to achieve it".
At the start of the war, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two opposing camps: a pro-treaty IRA and an anti-treaty IRA. The pro-treaty IRA disbanded and joined the new National Army. However, because the anti-treaty IRA lacked an effective command structure and because of the pro-treaty forces' defensive tactics throughout the war, Michael Collins and his pro-treaty forces were able to build up an army with many tens of thousands of World War I veterans from the 1922 disbanded Irish regiments of the British Army, capable of overwhelming the anti-treatyists. British supplies of artillery, aircraft, machine-guns and ammunition boosted pro-treaty forces, and the threat of a return of Crown forces to the Free State removed any doubts about the necessity of enforcing the treaty. Lack of public support for the anti-treaty forces (often called the Irregulars) and the determination of the government to overcome the Irregulars contributed significantly to their defeat.
Following a national plebiscite in July 1937, the new Constitution of Ireland (Bunreacht na hÉireann) came into force on 29 December 1937. This replaced the Constitution of the Irish Free State and declared that the name of the state is Éire, or "Ireland" in the English language. While Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution defined the national territory to be the whole island, they also confined the state's jurisdiction to the area that had been the Irish Free State. The former Irish Free State government had abolished the Office of Governor-General in December 1936. Although the constitution established the office of President of Ireland, the question over whether Ireland was a republic remained open. Diplomats were accredited to the king, but the president exercised all internal functions of a head of state. For instance, the President gave assent to new laws with his own authority, without reference to King George VI who was only an "organ", that was provided for by statute law.
Ireland remained neutral during World War II, a period it described as The Emergency. Ireland's Dominion status was terminated with the passage of The Republic of Ireland Act 1948, which came into force on 18 April 1949 and declared that the state was a republic. At the time, a declaration of a republic terminated Commonwealth membership. This rule was changed 10 days after Ireland declared itself a republic, with the London Declaration of 28 April 1949. Ireland did not reapply when the rules were altered to permit republics to join. Later, the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 was repealed in Ireland by the Statute Law Revision (Pre-Union Irish Statutes) Act 1962.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Republic of Ireland”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.