Genetics is the study of genes and tries to explain what they are and how they work. Genes are how living organisms inherit features or traits
from their ancestors; for example, children usually look like their
parents because they have inherited their parents' genes. Genetics tries
to identify which traits are inherited and to explain how these traits
are passed from generation to generation.
Some traits are part of an organism's physical appearance, such as eyecolor or height. Other sorts of traits are not easily seen and include blood types or resistance to diseases.
Some traits are inherited through genes, which is the reason why tall
and thin people tend to have tall and thin children. Other traits come
from interactions between genes and the environment, so a child who
inherited the tendency of being tall will still be short if poorlynourished.
The way our genes and environment interact to produce a trait can be
complicated. For example, the chances of somebody dying of cancer or heart disease seems to depend on both their genes and their lifestyle.
Genes are made from a long molecule called DNA, which is copied and inherited across generations. DNA is made of simple units that line up in a particular order within it, carrying genetic information. The language used by DNA is called genetic code,
which lets organisms read the information in the genes. This
information is the instructions for the construction and operation of a
living organism.
The information within a particular gene is not always exactly
the same between one organism and another, so different copies of a gene
do not always give exactly the same instructions. Each unique form of a
single gene is called an allele.
As an example, one allele for the gene for hair color could instruct
the body to produce much pigment, producing black hair, while a
different allele of the same gene might give garbled instructions that
fail to produce any pigment, giving white hair. Mutations
are random changes in genes and can create new alleles. Mutations can
also produce new traits, such as when mutations to an allele for black
hair produce a new allele for white hair. This appearance of new traits
is important in evolution.
Genes and inheritance
A section of DNA; the sequence of the plate-like units (nucleotides) in the center carries information.
Genes are pieces of DNA that contain information for the synthesis of ribonucleic acids (RNAs) or polypeptides.
Genes are inherited as units, with two parents dividing out copies of
their genes to their offspring. Humans have two copies of each of their
genes, but each egg or sperm cell only gets one of those copies for each gene. An egg and sperm join to form a zygote
with a complete set of genes. The resulting offspring has the same
number of genes as their parents, but for any gene, one of their two
copies comes from their father and one from their mother.
Example of mixing
The effects of mixing depend on the types (the alleles)
of the gene. If the father has two copies of an allele for red hair,
and the mother has two copies for brown hair, all their children get the
two alleles that give different instructions, one for red hair and one
for brown. The hair color of these children depends on how these alleles
work together. If one allele dominates the instructions from another, it is called the dominant allele, and the allele that is overridden is called the recessive allele. In the case of a daughter with alleles for both red and brown hair, brown is dominant and she ends up with brown hair.
A Punnett square showing how two brown haired parents can have red or brown haired children. 'B' is for brown and 'b' is for red.Red hair is a recessive trait.
Although the red color allele is still there in this brown-haired
girl, it doesn't show. This is a difference between what is seen on the
surface (the traits of an organism, called its phenotype) and the genes within the organism (its genotype).
In this example, the allele for brown can be called "B" and the allele
for red "b". (It is normal to write dominant alleles with capital
letters and recessive ones with lower-case letters.) The brown hair
daughter has the "brown hair phenotype" but her genotype is Bb, with one
copy of the B allele, and one of the b allele.
Now imagine that this woman grows up and has children with a
brown-haired man who also has a Bb genotype. Her eggs will be a mixture
of two types, one sort containing the B allele, and one sort the b
allele. Similarly, her partner will produce a mix of two types of sperm
containing one or the other of these two alleles. When the transmitted
genes are joined up in their offspring, these children have a chance of
getting either brown or red hair, since they could get a genotype of BB =
brown hair, Bb = brown hair or bb = red hair. In this generation, there
is, therefore, a chance of the recessive allele showing itself in the
phenotype of the children—some of them may have red hair like their
grandfather.
Many traits are inherited in a more complicated way than the
example above. This can happen when there are several genes involved,
each contributing a small part to the result. Tall people tend to have
tall children because their children get a package of many alleles that
each contribute a bit to how much they grow. However, there are not
clear groups of "short people" and "tall people", like there are groups
of people with brown or red hair. This is because of the large number of
genes involved; this makes the trait very variable and people are of
many different heights. Despite a common misconception, the green/blue eye traits are also inherited in this complex inheritance model.
Inheritance can also be complicated when the trait depends on the
interaction between genetics and environment. For example, malnutrition
does not change traits like eye color, but can stunt growth.
The function of genes is to provide the information needed to make molecules called proteins in cells.
Cells are the smallest independent parts of organisms: the human body
contains about 100 trillion cells, while very small organisms like bacteria
are just a single cell. A cell is like a miniature and very complex
factory that can make all the parts needed to produce a copy of itself,
which happens when cells divide.
There is a simple division of labor in cells—genes give instructions
and proteins carry out these instructions, tasks like building a new
copy of a cell, or repairing the damage.
Each type of protein is a specialist that only does one job, so if a
cell needs to do something new, it must make a new protein to do this
job. Similarly, if a cell needs to do something faster or slower than
before, it makes more or less of the protein responsible. Genes tell
cells what to do by telling them which proteins to make and in what
amounts.
Genes are expressed by being transcribed into RNA, and this RNA then translated into protein.
Proteins are made of a chain of 20 different types of amino acid
molecules. This chain folds up into a compact shape, rather like an
untidy ball of string. The shape of the protein is determined by the
sequence of amino acids along its chain and it is this shape that, in
turn, determines what the protein does.
For example, some proteins have parts of their surface that perfectly
match the shape of another molecule, allowing the protein to bind to
this molecule very tightly. Other proteins are enzymes, which are like tiny machines that alter other molecules.
The information in DNA is held in the sequence of the repeating units along the DNA chain. These units are four types of nucleotides (A, T, G and C) and the sequence of nucleotides stores information in an alphabet called the genetic code. When a gene is read by a cell the DNA sequence is copied into a very similar molecule called RNA (this process is called transcription). Transcription is controlled by other DNA sequences (such as promoters),
which show a cell where genes are, and control how often they are
copied. The RNA copy made from a gene is then fed through a structure
called a ribosome,
which translates the sequence of nucleotides in the RNA into the
correct sequence of amino acids and joins these amino acids together to
make a complete protein chain. The new protein then folds up into its
active form. The process of moving information from the language of RNA
into the language of amino acids is called translation.
If the sequence of the nucleotides in a gene changes, the sequence of
the amino acids in the protein it produces may also change—if part of a
gene is deleted, the protein produced is shorter and may not work
anymore.
This is the reason why different alleles of a gene can have different
effects on an organism. As an example, hair color depends on how much of
a dark substance called melanin
is put into the hair as it grows. If a person has a normal set of the
genes involved in making melanin, they make all the proteins needed and
they grow dark hair. However, if the alleles for a particular protein
have different sequences and produce proteins that can't do their jobs,
no melanin is produced and the person has white skin and hair (albinism).
Genes are copied each time a cell divides into two new cells. The process that copies DNA is called DNA replication.
It is through a similar process that a child inherits genes from its
parents when a copy from the mother is mixed with a copy from the
father.
DNA can be copied very easily and accurately because each piece
of DNA can direct the assembly of a new copy of its information. This is
because DNA is made of two strands that pair together like the two
sides of a zipper. The nucleotides are in the center, like the teeth in
the zipper, and pair up to hold the two strands together. Importantly,
the four different sorts of nucleotides are different shapes, so for the
strands to close up properly, an A nucleotide must go opposite a T nucleotide, and a G opposite a C. This exact pairing is called base pairing.
When DNA is copied, the two strands of the old DNA are pulled
apart by enzymes; then they pair up with new nucleotides and then close.
This produces two new pieces of DNA, each containing one strand from
the old DNA and one newly made strand. This process is not predictably
perfect as proteins attach to a nucleotide while they are building and
cause a change in the sequence of that gene. These changes in the DNA
sequence are called mutations.
Mutations produce new alleles of genes. Sometimes these changes stop
the functioning of that gene or make it serve another advantageous
function, such as the melanin genes discussed above. These mutations and
their effects on the traits of organisms are one of the causes of evolution.
A population of organisms evolves when an inherited trait becomes more common or less common over time.
For instance, all the mice living on an island would be a single
population of mice: some with white fur, some gray. If over generations,
white mice became more frequent and gray mice less frequent, then the
color of the fur in this population of mice would be evolving. In terms of genetics, this is called an increase in allele frequency.
Alleles become more or less common either by chance in a process called genetic drift or by natural selection.
In natural selection, if an allele makes it more likely for an organism
to survive and reproduce, then over time this allele becomes more
common. But if an allele is harmful, natural selection makes it less
common. In the above example, if the island were getting colder each
year and snow became present for much of the time, then the allele for
white fur would favor survival since predators would be less likely to
see them against the snow, and more likely to see the gray mice. Over
time white mice would become more and more frequent, while gray mice
less and less.
Mutations create new alleles. These alleles have new DNA sequences and can produce proteins with new properties.
So if an island was populated entirely by black mice, mutations could
happen creating alleles for white fur. The combination of mutations
creating new alleles at random, and natural selection picking out those
that are useful, causes an adaptation. This is when organisms change in ways that help them to survive and reproduce. Many such changes, studied in evolutionary developmental biology, affect the way the embryo develops into an adult body.
Inherited diseases
Some diseases are hereditary and run in families; others, such as infectious diseases, are caused by the environment. Other diseases come from a combination of genes and the environment. Genetic disorders are diseases that are caused by a single allele of a gene and are inherited in families. These include Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis or Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Cystic fibrosis, for example, is caused by mutations in a single gene called CFTR and is inherited as a recessive trait.
Other diseases are influenced by genetics, but the genes a person
gets from their parents only change their risk of getting a disease.
Most of these diseases are inherited in a complex way, with either
multiple genes involved, or coming from both genes and the environment.
As an example, the risk of breast cancer
is 50 times higher in the families most at risk, compared to the
families least at risk. This variation is probably due to a large number
of alleles, each changing the risk a little bit. Several of the genes have been identified, such as BRCA1 and BRCA2,
but not all of them. However, although some of the risks are genetic,
the risk of this cancer is also increased by being overweight, heavy
alcohol consumption and not exercising.
A woman's risk of breast cancer, therefore, comes from a large number
of alleles interacting with her environment, so it is very hard to
predict.
Since traits come from the genes in a cell, putting a new piece of DNA into a cell can produce a new trait. This is how genetic engineering works. For example, rice can be given genes from a maize and a soil bacteria so the rice produces beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A. This can help children with Vitamin A deficiency. Another gene being put into some crops comes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis; the gene makes a protein that is an insecticide. The insecticide kills insects that eat the plants but is harmless to people.
In these plants, the new genes are put into the plant before it is
grown, so the genes are in every part of the plant, including its seeds. The plant's offspring inherit the new genes, which has led to concern about the spread of new traits into wild plants.
The kind of technology used in genetic engineering is also being developed to treat people with genetic disorders in an experimental medical technique called gene therapy.
However, here the new, properly working gene is put in targeted cells,
not altering the chance of future children inheriting the disease
causing alleles.
Modern
desktop operating systems are capable of handling large numbers of
different processes at the same time. This screenshot shows Linux Mint running simultaneously Xfce desktop environment, Firefox, a calculator program, the built-in calendar, Vim, GIMP, and VLC media player.Multitasking of Microsoft Windows 1.01 released in 1985, here shown running the MS-DOS Executive and Calculator programs
In computing, multitasking is the concurrent execution of multiple tasks (also known as processes)
over a certain period of time. New tasks can interrupt already started
ones before they finish, instead of waiting for them to end. As a
result, a computer executes segments of multiple tasks in an interleaved
manner, while the tasks share common processing resources such as central processing units (CPUs) and main memory.
Multitasking automatically interrupts the running program, saving its
state (partial results, memory contents and computer register contents)
and loading the saved state of another program and transferring control
to it. This "context switch" may be initiated at fixed time intervals (pre-emptive multitasking), or the running program may be coded to signal to the supervisory software when it can be interrupted (cooperative multitasking).
Multitasking does not require parallel execution of multiple tasks at exactly the same time; instead, it allows more than one task to advance over a given period of time. Even on multiprocessor computers, multitasking allows many more tasks to be run than there are CPUs.
Multitasking is a common feature of computer operating systems
since at least the 1960s. It allows more efficient use of the computer
hardware; when a program is waiting for some external event such as a
user input or an input/output transfer with a peripheral to complete, the central processor can still be used with another program. In a time-sharing
system, multiple human operators use the same processor as if it was
dedicated to their use, while behind the scenes the computer is serving
many users by multitasking their individual programs. In multiprogramming systems, a task runs until it must wait for an external event or until the operating system's scheduler forcibly swaps the running task out of the CPU. Real-time
systems such as those designed to control industrial robots, require
timely processing; a single processor might be shared between
calculations of machine movement, communications, and user interface.
Often multitasking operating systems include measures to change
the priority of individual tasks, so that important jobs receive more
processor time than those considered less significant. Depending on the
operating system, a task might be as large as an entire application
program, or might be made up of smaller threads that carry out portions of the overall program.
A processor intended for use with multitasking operating systems
may include special hardware to securely support multiple tasks, such as
memory protection, and protection rings that ensure the supervisory software cannot be damaged or subverted by user-mode program errors.
The term "multitasking" has become an international term, as the
same word is used in many other languages such as German, Italian,
Dutch, Romanian, Czech, Danish and Norwegian.
Multiprogramming
In the early days of computing, CPU time was expensive, and peripherals
were very slow. When the computer ran a program that needed access to a
peripheral, the central processing unit (CPU) would have to stop
executing program instructions while the peripheral processed the data.
This was usually very inefficient. Multiprogramming is a computing
technique that enables multiple programs to be concurrently loaded and
executed into a computer's memory, allowing the CPU to switch between
them swiftly. This optimizes CPU utilization by keeping it engaged with
the execution of tasks, particularly useful when one program is waiting
for I/O operations to complete.
The Bull Gamma 60,
initially designed in 1957 and first released in 1960, was the first
computer designed with multiprogramming in mind. Its architecture
featured a central memory and a Program Distributor feeding up to
twenty-five autonomous processing units with code and data, and allowing
concurrent operation of multiple clusters.
Another such computer was the LEO III, first released in 1961. During batch processing,
several different programs were loaded in the computer memory, and the
first one began to run. When the first program reached an instruction
waiting for a peripheral, the context of this program was stored away,
and the second program in memory was given a chance to run. The process
continued until all programs finished running.
The use of multiprogramming was enhanced by the arrival of virtual memory and virtual machine
technology, which enabled individual programs to make use of memory and
operating system resources as if other concurrently running programs
were, for all practical purposes, nonexistent.
Multiprogramming gives no guarantee that a program will run in a
timely manner. Indeed, the first program may very well run for hours
without needing access to a peripheral. As there were no users waiting
at an interactive terminal, this was no problem: users handed in a deck
of punched cards to an operator, and came back a few hours later for
printed results. Multiprogramming greatly reduced wait times when
multiple batches were being processed.
Early multitasking systems used applications that voluntarily ceded
time to one another. This approach, which was eventually supported by
many computer operating systems,
is known today as cooperative multitasking. Although it is now rarely
used in larger systems except for specific applications such as CICS or the JES2 subsystem, cooperative multitasking was once the only scheduling scheme employed by Microsoft Windows and classic Mac OS to enable multiple applications to run simultaneously. Cooperative multitasking is still used today on RISC OS systems.
As a cooperatively multitasked system relies on each process
regularly giving up time to other processes on the system, one poorly
designed program can consume all of the CPU time for itself, either by
performing extensive calculations or by busy waiting; both would cause the whole system to hang. In a server environment, this is a hazard that makes the entire environment unacceptably fragile.
Kubuntu (KDE Plasma 5) four Virtual desktops running multiple programs at the same time
Preemptive multitasking allows the computer system to more reliably
guarantee to each process a regular "slice" of operating time. It also
allows the system to deal rapidly with important external events like
incoming data, which might require the immediate attention of one or
another process. Operating systems were developed to take advantage of
these hardware capabilities and run multiple processes preemptively.
Preemptive multitasking was implemented in the PDP-6 Monitor and Multics in 1964, in OS/360 MFT in 1967, and in Unix in 1969, and was available in some operating systems for computers as small as DEC's PDP-8; it is a core feature of all Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux, Solaris and BSD with its derivatives, as well as modern versions of Windows.
At any specific time, processes can be grouped into two categories: those that are waiting for input or output (called "I/O bound"), and those that are fully utilizing the CPU ("CPU bound"). In primitive systems, the software would often "poll", or "busywait"
while waiting for requested input (such as disk, keyboard or network
input). During this time, the system was not performing useful work.
With the advent of interrupts and preemptive multitasking, I/O bound
processes could be "blocked", or put on hold, pending the arrival of the
necessary data, allowing other processes to utilize the CPU. As the
arrival of the requested data would generate an interrupt, blocked
processes could be guaranteed a timely return to execution.
Possibly the earliest preemptive multitasking OS available to home users was Microware's OS-9, available for computers based on the Motorola 6809 such as the TRS-80 Color Computer 2, with the operating system supplied by Tandy as an upgrade for disk-equipped systems. Sinclair QDOS on the Sinclair QL followed in 1984, but it was not a big success. Commodore's Amiga
was released the following year, offering a combination of multitasking
and multimedia capabilities. Microsoft made preemptive multitasking a
core feature of their flagship operating system in the early 1990s when
developing Windows NT 3.1 and then Windows 95. In 1988 Apple offered A/UX as a UNIX System V-based alternative to the Classic Mac OS. In 2001 Apple switched to the NeXTSTEP-influenced Mac OS X.
A similar model is used in Windows 9x and the Windows NT family, where native 32-bit applications are multitasked preemptively. 64-bit editions of Windows, both for the x86-64 and Itanium
architectures, no longer support legacy 16-bit applications, and thus
provide preemptive multitasking for all supported applications.
Real time
Another reason for multitasking was in the design of real-time computing
systems, where there are a number of possibly unrelated external
activities needed to be controlled by a single processor system. In such
systems a hierarchical interrupt system is coupled with process
prioritization to ensure that key activities were given a greater share
of available process time.
Multithreading
As
multitasking greatly improved the throughput of computers, programmers
started to implement applications as sets of cooperating processes
(e. g., one process gathering input data, one process processing input
data, one process writing out results on disk). This, however, required
some tools to allow processes to efficiently exchange data.
Threads
were born from the idea that the most efficient way for cooperating
processes to exchange data would be to share their entire memory space.
Thus, threads are effectively processes that run in the same memory
context and share other resources with their parent processes, such as open files. Threads are described as lightweight processes because switching between threads does not involve changing the memory context.
While threads are scheduled preemptively, some operating systems provide a variant to threads, named fibers,
that are scheduled cooperatively. On operating systems that do not
provide fibers, an application may implement its own fibers using
repeated calls to worker functions. Fibers are even more lightweight
than threads, and somewhat easier to program with, although they tend to
lose some or all of the benefits of threads on machines with multiple processors.
Essential to any multitasking system is to safely and effectively
share access to system resources. Access to memory must be strictly
managed to ensure that no process can inadvertently or deliberately read
or write to memory locations outside the process's address space. This
is done for the purpose of general system stability and data integrity,
as well as data security.
In general, memory access management is a responsibility of the
operating system kernel, in combination with hardware mechanisms that
provide supporting functionalities, such as a memory management unit
(MMU). If a process attempts to access a memory location outside its
memory space, the MMU denies the request and signals the kernel to take
appropriate actions; this usually results in forcibly terminating the
offending process. Depending on the software and kernel design and the
specific error in question, the user may receive an access violation
error message such as "segmentation fault".
In a well designed and correctly implemented multitasking system,
a given process can never directly access memory that belongs to
another process. An exception to this rule is in the case of shared
memory; for example, in the System V
inter-process communication mechanism the kernel allocates memory to be
mutually shared by multiple processes. Such features are often used by
database management software such as PostgreSQL.
Inadequate memory protection mechanisms, either due to flaws in
their design or poor implementations, allow for security vulnerabilities
that may be potentially exploited by malicious software.
Memory swapping
Use of a swap file
or swap partition is a way for the operating system to provide more
memory than is physically available by keeping portions of the primary
memory in secondary storage.
While multitasking and memory swapping are two completely unrelated
techniques, they are very often used together, as swapping memory allows
more tasks to be loaded at the same time. Typically, a multitasking
system allows another process to run when the running process hits a
point where it has to wait for some portion of memory to be reloaded
from secondary storage.
Programming
Various concurrent computing techniques are used to avoid potential problems caused by multiple tasks attempting to access the same resource.
Over the years, multitasking systems have been refined. Modern
operating systems generally include detailed mechanisms for prioritizing
processes, while symmetric multiprocessing has introduced new complexities and capabilities.
The geography of Ireland comprises relatively low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers
extending inland. Its lush vegetation is a product of its mild but
changeable climate which is free of extremes in temperature. Much of
Ireland was woodland until the end of the Middle Ages. Today, woodland makes up about 10% of the island, compared with a European average of over 33%, with most of it being non-native conifer plantations. The Irish climate is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and thus very moderate,
and winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area,
although summers are cooler than those in continental Europe. Rainfall
and cloud cover are abundant.
Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century AD. The island was Christianised
from the 5th century onwards. During this period Ireland was divided
into many petty kingships under provincial kingships (Cúige "fifth" of
the traditional provinces) vying for dominance and the title of High King of Ireland. In the late 8th to early 11th century AD, Viking raids and settlements took place culminating in the Battle of Clontarf on 23 April 1014 which resulted in the ending of Viking power in Ireland. Following the 12th-century Anglo-Norman invasion, England claimed sovereignty. However, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, and was extended during the 18th century. With the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. A war of independence in the early 20th century was followed by the partition of the island, leading to the creation of the Irish Free State,
which became increasingly sovereign over the following decades until it
declared a republic in 1948 (Republic of Ireland Act, 1948) and
Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom. Northern
Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s. This subsided following the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In 1973, both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, with Northern Ireland as part of it, joined the European Economic Community. Following a referendum vote in 2016, the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland included, left the European Union
(EU) in 2020. Northern Ireland was granted a limited special status and
allowed to operate within the EU single market for goods without being
in the European Union.
The names Ireland and Éire derive from Old IrishÉriu, a goddess in Irish mythology first recorded in the ninth century. The etymology of Ériu is disputed but may derive from the Proto-Indo-European root *h2uer, referring to flowing water.
During the last glacial period, and until about 16,000 BC, much of Ireland was periodically covered in ice. The relative sea level was less than 50m lower resulting in an ice bridge (but not a land bridge) forming between Ireland and Great Britain.
By 14,000 BC this ice bridge existed only between Northern Ireland and
Scotland and by 12,000 BC Ireland was completely separated from Great
Britain. Later, around 6,100 BC, Great Britain became separated from continental Europe.
Until recently, the earliest evidence of human activity in Ireland was
dated at 12,500 years ago, demonstrated by a butchered bear bone found
in a cave in County Clare. Since 2021, the earliest evidence of human activity in Ireland is dated to 33,000 years ago.
By about 8,000 BC, more sustained occupation of the island has been shown, with evidence for Mesolithic communities around the island.
Some time before 4,000 BC, Neolithicsettlers introduced cereal cultivars, domesticated animals such as cattle and sheep, built large timber buildings, and stone monuments. The earliest evidence for farming in Ireland or Great Britain is from Ferriter's Cove, County Kerry, where a flint knife, cattle bones and a sheep's tooth were carbon-dated to c. 4,350 BC. Field systems were developed in different parts of Ireland, including at the Céide Fields, that has been preserved beneath a blanket of peat in present-day Tyrawley. An extensive field system, arguably the oldest in the world, consisted of small divisions separated by dry-stone walls. The fields were farmed for several centuries between 3,500 BC and 3,000 BC. Wheat and barley were the principal crops.
The Bronze Age
began around 2,500 BC, with technology changing people's everyday lives
during this period through innovations such as the wheel, harnessing oxen, weaving textiles, brewing alcohol and metalworking, which produced new weapons and tools, along with fine gold decoration and jewellery, such as brooches and torcs.
Emergence of Celtic Ireland
How and when the island became Celtic has been debated for close to a
century, with the migrations of the Celts being one of the more
enduring themes of archaeological and linguistic studies. The most
recent genetic research strongly associates the spread of Indo-European languages (including Celtic) through Western Europe with a people bringing a composite Beaker culture, with its arrival in Britain and Ireland dated to around the middle of the third millennium BC. According to John T. Koch and others, Ireland in the Late Bronze Age was part of a maritime trading-network culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age that also included Britain, western France and Iberia, and that this is where Celtic languages developed. This contrasts with the traditional view that their origin lies in mainland Europe with the Hallstatt culture.
The long-standing traditional view is that the Celtic language, Ogham script and culture were brought to Ireland by waves of invading or migrating Celts from mainland Europe. This theory draws on the Lebor Gabála Érenn,
a medieval Christian pseudo-history of Ireland, along with the presence
of Celtic culture, language and artefacts found in Ireland such as
Celtic bronze spears, shields, torcs and other finely crafted Celtic
associated possessions. The theory holds that there were four separate
Celtic invasions of Ireland. The Priteni were said to be the first, followed by the Belgae
from northern Gaul and Britain. Later, Laighin tribes from Armorica
(present-day Brittany) were said to have invaded Ireland and Britain
more or less simultaneously. Lastly, the Milesians (Gaels) were said to have reached Ireland from either northern Iberia or southern Gaul.
It was claimed that a second wave named the Euerni, belonging to the
Belgae people of northern Gaul, began arriving about the sixth century
BC. They were said to have given their name to the island.
The theory was advanced in part because of the lack of
archaeological evidence for large-scale Celtic immigration, though it is
accepted that such movements are notoriously difficult to identify.
Historical linguists are skeptical that this method alone could account
for the absorption of Celtic language, with some saying that an assumed
processual view of Celtic linguistic formation is 'an especially
hazardous exercise'.
Genetic lineage investigation into the area of Celtic migration to
Ireland has led to findings that showed no significant differences in mitochondrial DNA
between Ireland and large areas of continental Europe, in contrast to
parts of the Y-chromosome pattern. When taking both into account, a
study concluded that modern Celtic speakers in Ireland could be thought
of as European "Atlantic Celts" showing a shared ancestry throughout the
Atlantic zone from northern Iberia to western Scandinavia rather than
substantially central European.
In 2012, research showed that the occurrence of genetic markers for the
earliest farmers was almost eliminated by Beaker-culture immigrants:
they carried what was then a new Y-chromosome R1b marker, believed to
have originated in Iberia about 2,500 BC. The prevalence amongst modern
Irish men of this mutation is a remarkable 84%, the highest in the
world, and closely matched in other populations along the Atlantic
fringes down to Spain. A similar genetic replacement happened with
lineages in mitochondrial DNA. This conclusion is supported by recent research carried out by the geneticist David Reich,
who says: "British and Irish skeletons from the Bronze Age that
followed the Beaker period had at most 10 per cent ancestry from the
first farmers of these islands, with other 90 per cent from people like
those associated with the Bell Beaker culture in the Netherlands." He
suggests that it was Beaker users who introduced an Indo-European
language, represented here by Celtic (i.e. a new language and culture
introduced directly by migration and genetic replacement).
The Scoti were Gaelic-speaking people from Ireland who settled in western Scotland in the 6th century or before.
The earliest written records of Ireland come from classical Greco-Roman geographers. Ptolemy in his Almagest refers to Ireland as Mikra Brettania ("Little Britain"), in contrast to the larger island, which he called Megale Brettania ("Great Britain"). In his map of Ireland in his later work, Geography, Ptolemy refers to Ireland as Iouernia and to Great Britain as Albion. These 'new' names were likely to have been the local names for the islands at the time. The earlier names, in contrast, were likely to have been coined before direct contact with local peoples was made.
The Romans referred to Ireland by this name too in its Latinised form, Hibernia, or Scotia. Ptolemy records 16 nations inhabiting every part of Ireland in 100 AD.
The relationship between the Roman Empire and the kingdoms of ancient
Ireland is unclear. However, a number of finds of Roman coins have been
made, for example at the Iron Age settlement of Freestone Hill near Gowran and Newgrange.
Ireland continued as a patchwork of rival kingdoms; however,
beginning in the 7th century, a concept of national kingship gradually
became articulated through the concept of a High King of Ireland. Medieval Irish literature
portrays an almost unbroken sequence of high kings stretching back
thousands of years, but some modern historians believe the scheme was
constructed in the 8th century to justify the status of powerful
political groupings by projecting the origins of their rule into the
remote past.
All of the Irish kingdoms had their own kings but were nominally
subject to the high king. The high king was drawn from the ranks of the
provincial kings and ruled also the royal kingdom of Meath, with a ceremonial capital at the Hill of Tara. The concept did not become a political reality until the Viking Age and even then was not a consistent one. Ireland did have a culturally unifying rule of law: the early written judicial system, the Brehon Laws, administered by a professional class of jurists known as the brehons.
The Chronicle of Ireland records that in 431, Bishop Palladius arrived in Ireland on a mission from Pope Celestine I to minister to the Irish "already believing in Christ". The same chronicle records that Saint Patrick, Ireland's best known patron saint,
arrived the following year. There is continued debate over the missions
of Palladius and Patrick, but the consensus is that they both took
place and that the older druid tradition collapsed in the face of the new religion.
Irish Christian scholars excelled in the study of Latin and Greek
learning and Christian theology. In the monastic culture that followed
the Christianisation of Ireland, Latin and Greek learning was preserved
in Ireland during the Early Middle Ages in contrast to elsewhere in Western Europe, where the Dark Ages followed the Fall of the Western Roman Empire.
A folio of the Book of Kells showing Christ enthroned
From the 9th century, waves of Viking raiders plundered Irish monasteries and towns. These raids added to a pattern of raiding and endemic warfare
that was already deep-seated in Ireland. The Vikings were involved in
establishing most of the major coastal settlements in Ireland: Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Wexford, Waterford, as well as other smaller settlements.
On 1 May 1169, an expedition of Cambro-Norman knights, with an army of about 600 men, landed at Bannow Strand in present-day County Wexford. It was led by Richard de Clare, known as 'Strongbow' owing to his prowess as an archer. The invasion, which coincided with a period of renewed Norman expansion, was at the invitation of Dermot Mac Murrough, King of Leinster.
In 1166, Mac Murrough had fled to Anjou, France, following a war involving Tighearnán Ua Ruairc, of Breifne, and sought the assistance of the Angevin King Henry II,
in recapturing his kingdom. In 1171, Henry arrived in Ireland in order
to review the general progress of the expedition. He wanted to re-exert
royal authority over the invasion which was expanding beyond his
control. Henry successfully re-imposed his authority over Strongbow and
the Cambro-Norman warlords and persuaded many of the Irish kings to
accept him as their overlord, an arrangement confirmed in the 1175 Treaty of Windsor.
The invasion was legitimised by reference to provisions of the alleged Papal BullLaudabiliter, issued by an Englishman, Adrian IV,
in 1155. The document apparently encouraged Henry to take control in
Ireland in order to oversee the financial and administrative
reorganisation of the Irish Church and its integration into the Roman Church system. Some restructuring had already begun at the ecclesiastical level following the Synod of Kells in 1152. There has been significant controversy regarding the authenticity of Laudabiliter, and there is no general agreement as to whether the bull was genuine or a forgery. Further, it had no standing in the Irish legal system.
Political boundaries in Ireland in 1450, before the plantations
In 1172, Pope Alexander III
further encouraged Henry to advance the integration of the Irish Church
with Rome. Henry was authorised to impose a tithe of one penny per
hearth as an annual contribution. This church levy, called Peter's Pence, is extant in Ireland as a voluntary donation. In turn, Henry assumed the title of Lord of Ireland which Henry conferred on his younger son, John Lackland, in 1185. This defined the Anglo-Norman administration in Ireland as the Lordship of Ireland.When Henry's successor died unexpectedly in 1199, John
inherited the crown of England and retained the Lordship of Ireland.
Over the century that followed, Norman feudal law gradually replaced the
Gaelic Brehon Law across large areas, so that by the late 13th century
the Norman-Irish
had established a feudal system throughout much of Ireland. Norman
settlements were characterised by the establishment of baronies, manors,
towns and the seeds of the modern county system. A version of Magna Carta (the Great Charter of Ireland), substituting Dublin for London and the Irish Church for, the English church at the time, the Catholic Church, was published in 1216 and the Parliament of Ireland was founded in 1297.
Gaelicisation
From the mid-14th century, after the Black Death,
Norman settlements in Ireland went into a period of decline. The Norman
rulers and the Gaelic Irish elites intermarried and the areas under
Norman rule became Gaelicised. In some parts, a hybrid Hiberno-Norman culture emerged. In response, the Irish parliament passed the Statutes of Kilkenny
in 1367. These were a set of laws designed to prevent the assimilation
of the Normans into Irish society by requiring English subjects in
Ireland to speak English, follow English customs and abide by English
law.
By the end of the 15th century, central English authority in
Ireland had all but disappeared, and a renewed Irish culture and
language, albeit with Norman influences, was again dominant. English
Crown control remained relatively unshaken in an amorphous foothold
around Dublin known as The Pale, and under the provisions of Poynings' Law of 1494, Irish Parliamentary legislation was subject to the approval of the English Privy Council.
A
16th-century perception of Irish women and girls, illustrated in the
manuscript "Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec
leurs habits et ornemens divers, tant anciens que modernes, diligemment
depeints au naturel". Painted by Lucas d'Heere in the 2nd half of the 16th century. Preserved in the Ghent University Library.
This control was consolidated during the wars and conflicts of
the 17th century, including the English and Scottish colonisation in the
Plantations of Ireland, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War. Irish losses during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (which, in Ireland, included the Irish Confederacy and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland)
are estimated to include 20,000 battlefield casualties. 200,000
civilians are estimated to have died as a result of a combination of
war-related famine, displacement, guerrilla activity and pestilence
throughout the war. A further 50,000 were sent into indentured servitude in the West Indies. Physician-general William Petty
estimated that 504,000 Catholic Irish and 112,000 Protestant settlers
died, and 100,000 people were transported, as a result of the war. If a prewar population of 1.5 million is assumed, this would mean that the population was reduced by almost half.
The religious struggles of the 17th century left a deep sectarian
division in Ireland. Religious allegiance now determined the perception
in law of loyalty to the Irish King and Parliament. After the passing
of the Test Act 1672, and the victory of the forces of the dual monarchy of William and Mary over the Jacobites,
Roman Catholics and nonconforming Protestant Dissenters were barred
from sitting as members in the Irish Parliament. Under the emerging Penal Laws,
Irish Roman Catholics and Dissenters were increasingly deprived of
various civil rights, even the ownership of hereditary property.
Additional regressive punitive legislation followed in 1703, 1709 and
1728. This completed a comprehensive systemic effort to materially
disadvantage Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters while enriching a
new ruling class of Anglican conformists. The new Anglo-Irish ruling class became known as the Protestant Ascendancy.
The "Great Frost"
struck Ireland and the rest of Europe between December 1739 and
September 1741, after a decade of relatively mild winters. The winters
destroyed stored crops of potatoes and other staples, and the poor
summers severely damaged harvests. This resulted in the famine of 1740. An estimated 250,000 people (about one in eight of the population) died from the ensuing pestilence and disease. The Irish government halted export of corn and kept the army in quarters but did little more. Local gentry and charitable organisations provided relief but could do little to prevent the ensuing mortality.
In the aftermath of the famine, an increase in industrial
production and a surge in trade brought a succession of construction
booms. The population soared in the latter part of this century and the architectural legacy of Georgian Ireland was built. In 1782, Poynings' Law
was repealed, giving Ireland legislative independence from Great
Britain for the first time since 1495. The British government, however,
still retained the right to nominate the government of Ireland without
the consent of the Irish parliament.
In 1798, members of the Protestant Dissenter tradition (mainly Presbyterian) made common cause with Roman Catholics in a republican rebellion inspired and led by the Society of United Irishmen, with the aim of creating an independent Ireland. Despite assistance from France the rebellion
was put down by British and Irish government and yeomanry forces. The
rebellion lasted from the 24th of May to the 12th of October that year
and saw the establishment of the short lived Irish Republic (1798) in the province of Connacht. It saw numerous battles across the island with an estimated 30,000 people dead.
The passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was ultimately
achieved with substantial majorities, having failed on the first attempt
in 1799. According to contemporary documents and historical analysis,
this was achieved through a considerable degree of bribery, with funding
provided by the British Secret Service Office, and the awarding of
peerages, places and honours to secure votes. Thus, the parliament in Ireland was abolished and replaced by a united parliament at Westminster in London, though resistance remained, as evidenced by Robert Emmet's failed Irish Rebellion of 1803.
Aside from the development of the linen industry, Ireland was largely passed over by the Industrial Revolution, partly because it lacked coal and iron resources and partly because of the impact of the sudden union with the structurally superior economy of England, which saw Ireland as a source of agricultural produce and capital.
A depiction of the Great Famine from Our Boys in Ireland by Henry Willard French (1891)
The Great Famine
of 1845–1851 devastated Ireland, as in those years Ireland's population
fell by one-third. More than one million people died from starvation
and disease, with an additional million people emigrating during the
famine, mostly to the United States and Canada. In the century that followed, an economic depression caused by the famine resulted in a further million people emigrating. By the end of the decade, half of all immigration to the United States was from Ireland. The period of civil unrest that followed until the end of the 19th century is referred to as the Land War.
Mass emigration became deeply entrenched and the population continued
to decline until the mid-20th century. Immediately prior to the famine
the population was recorded as 8.2 million by the 1841 census. The population has never returned to this level since. The population continued to fall until 1961; County Leitrim was the final Irish county to record a population increase post-famine, in 2006.
The 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rise of modern Irish nationalism, primarily among the Roman Catholic population. The pre-eminent Irish political figure after the Union was Daniel O'Connell. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Ennis in a surprise result and despite being unable to take his seat as a Roman Catholic. O'Connell spearheaded a vigorous campaign that was taken up by the Prime Minister, the Irish-born soldier and statesman, the Duke of Wellington. Steering the Catholic Relief Bill through Parliament, aided by future prime minister Robert Peel, Wellington prevailed upon a reluctant George IV to sign the Bill and proclaim it into law. George's father had opposed the plan of the earlier Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger, to introduce such a bill following the Union of 1801, fearing Catholic Emancipation to be in conflict with the Act of Settlement 1701.
Daniel O'Connell led a subsequent campaign, for the repeal of the Act of Union, which failed. Later in the century, Charles Stewart Parnell and others campaigned for autonomy within the Union, or "Home Rule".
Unionists, especially those located in Ulster, were strongly opposed to
Home Rule, which they thought would be dominated by Catholic interests.
After several attempts to pass a Home Rule bill through parliament, it
looked certain that one would finally pass in 1914. To prevent this from
happening, the Ulster Volunteers were formed in 1913 under the leadership of Edward Carson.
Their formation was followed in 1914 by the establishment of the Irish Volunteers, whose aim was to ensure that the Home Rule Bill
was passed. The Act was passed but with the "temporary" exclusion of
the six counties of Ulster, which later became Northern Ireland. Before
it could be implemented, however, the Act was suspended for the duration
of the First World War. The Irish Volunteers split into two groups. The majority, approximately 175,000 in number, under John Redmond, took the name National Volunteers and supported Irish involvement in the war. A minority, approximately 13,000, retained the Irish Volunteers' name and opposed Ireland's involvement in the war.
The Easter Rising of 1916 was carried out by the latter group together with a smaller socialist militia, the Irish Citizen Army.
The British response, executing 15 leaders of the Rising over a period
of ten days and imprisoning or interning more than a thousand people,
turned the mood of the country in favour of the rebels. Support for Irish republicanism increased further due to the ongoing war in Europe, as well as the Conscription Crisis of 1918.
The pro-independence republican party, Sinn Féin, received overwhelming endorsement in the general election of 1918, and in 1919 proclaimed an Irish Republic, setting up its own parliament (Dáil Éireann) and government. Simultaneously the Volunteers, which became known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), launched a three-year guerrilla war, which ended in a truce in July 1921 (although violence continued until June 1922, mostly in Northern Ireland).
In December 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was concluded between the British government and representatives of the Second Dáil.
It gave Ireland complete independence in its home affairs and practical
independence for foreign policy, but an opt-out clause allowed Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom, which it immediately exercised. Additionally, Members of the Free State Parliament were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the Irish Free State and make a statement of faithfulness to the king. Disagreements over these provisions led to a split in the nationalist movement and a subsequent Irish Civil War between the new government of the Irish Free State and those opposed to the treaty, led by Éamon de Valera. The civil war officially ended in May 1923 when de Valera issued a cease-fire order.
During its first decade, the newly formed Irish Free State was
governed by the victors of the civil war. When de Valera achieved power,
he took advantage of the Statute of Westminster and political circumstances
to build upon inroads to greater sovereignty made by the previous
government. The oath was abolished and in 1937 a new constitution was
adopted.
This completed a process of gradual separation from the British Empire
that governments had pursued since independence. However, it was not
until 1949 that the state was declared, officially, to be the Republic of Ireland.
The German intelligence was also active in Ireland. Its operations ended in September 1941 when police
made arrests based on surveillance carried out on the key diplomatic
legations in Dublin. To the authorities, counterintelligence was a
fundamental line of defence. With a regular army of only slightly over
seven thousand men at the start of the war, and with limited supplies of
modern weapons, the state would have had great difficulty in defending
itself from invasion from either side in the conflict.
Large-scale emigration marked most of the post-WWII period
(particularly during the 1950s and 1980s), but beginning in 1987 the
economy improved, and the 1990s saw the beginning of substantial
economic growth. This period of growth became known as the Celtic Tiger. The Republic's real GDP grew by an average of 9.6% per annum between 1995 and 1999, in which year the Republic joined the euro. In 2000, it was the sixth-richest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita. Historian R. F. Foster
argues the cause was a combination of a new sense of initiative and the
entry of American corporations. He concludes the chief factors were low
taxation, pro-business regulatory policies, and a young, tech-savvy
workforce. For many multinationals, the decision to do business in
Ireland was made easier still by generous incentives from the Industrial Development Authority. In addition European Union
membership was helpful, giving the country lucrative access to markets
that it had previously reached only through the United Kingdom, and
pumping huge subsidies and investment capital into the Irish economy.
Modernisation brought secularisation in its wake. The
traditionally high levels of religiosity have sharply declined. Foster
points to three factors: First, Irish feminism, largely imported from
America with liberal stances on contraception, abortion and divorce,
undermined the authority of bishops and priests. Second, the mishandling
of the paedophile scandals humiliated the Church, whose bishops seemed
less concerned with the victims and more concerned with covering up for
errant priests. Third, prosperity brought hedonism and materialism that
undercut the ideals of saintly poverty.
The financial crisis
that began in 2008 dramatically ended this period of boom. GDP fell by
3% in 2008 and by 7.1% in 2009, the worst year since records began
(although earnings by foreign-owned businesses continued to grow). The state has since experienced deep recession, with unemployment, which doubled during 2009, remaining above 14% in 2012.
Northern Ireland resulted from the division of the United Kingdom by the Government of Ireland Act 1920,
and until 1972 was a self-governing jurisdiction within the United
Kingdom with its own parliament and prime minister. Northern Ireland, as
part of the United Kingdom, was not neutral during the Second World
War, and Belfast suffered four bombing raids in 1941. Conscription
was not extended to Northern Ireland, and roughly an equal number
volunteered from Northern Ireland as volunteered from the Republic of
Ireland.
Although Northern Ireland was largely spared the strife of the civil
war, in the decades that followed partition there were sporadic episodes
of inter-communal violence. Nationalists, mainly Roman Catholic, wanted
to unite Ireland as an independent republic, whereas unionists, mainly
Protestant, wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom. The
Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland voted largely
along sectarian lines, meaning that the government of Northern Ireland (elected by "first-past-the-post" from 1929) was controlled by the Ulster Unionist Party. Over time, the minority Catholic community felt increasingly alienated with further disaffection fuelled by practices such as gerrymandering and discrimination in housing and employment.
In the late 1960s, nationalist grievances were aired publicly in mass civil rights protests, which were often confronted by loyalist counter-protests.
The government's reaction to confrontations was seen to be one-sided
and heavy-handed in favour of unionists. Law and order broke down as
unrest and inter-communal violence increased.[104] The Northern Ireland government requested the British Army to aid the police and protect the Irish Nationalist population. In 1969, the paramilitary Provisional IRA, which favoured the creation of a united Ireland, emerged from a split in the Irish Republican Army and began a campaign against what it called the "British occupation of the six counties".
Other groups, both the unionist and nationalist participated in violence, and a period known as "the Troubles" began. More than 3,600 deaths resulted over the subsequent three decades of conflict. Owing to the civil unrest during the Troubles, the British government suspended home rule in 1972 and imposed direct rule. There were several unsuccessful attempts to end the Troubles politically, such as the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973. In 1998, following a ceasefire by the Provisional IRA and multi-party talks, the Good Friday Agreement was concluded as a treaty between the British and Irish governments, annexing the text agreed in the multi-party talks.
The substance of the Agreement (formally referred to as the
Belfast Agreement) was later endorsed by referendums in both parts of
Ireland. The Agreement restored self-government to Northern Ireland on
the basis of power-sharing in a regional Executive drawn from the major parties in a new Northern Ireland Assembly, with entrenched protections for the two main communities. The Executive is jointly headed by a First Minister and deputy First Minister
drawn from the unionist and nationalist parties. Violence had decreased
greatly after the Provisional IRA and loyalist ceasefires in 1994, and
in 2005, the Provisional IRA announced the end of its armed campaign and
an independent commission supervised its disarmament and that of other nationalist and unionist paramilitary organisations.
The Assembly and power-sharing Executive were suspended several
times but were restored again in 2007. In that year the British
government officially ended its military support of the police in
Northern Ireland (Operation Banner) and began withdrawing troops. On 27 June 2012, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister and former IRA commander, Martin McGuinness, shook hands with Queen Elizabeth II in Belfast, symbolising reconciliation between the two sides.
The Republic of Ireland is a member state of the European Union
while the United Kingdom is a former member state, having both acceded
to its precursor entity, the European Economic Community (EEC), in 1973
but the UK left the European Union in 2020 after a referendum on EU membership was held in 2016 which resulted in 51.9% of UK voters choosing to leave the bloc.
The Republic of Ireland today ranks among the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita and in 2015 was ranked the sixth most developed nation in the world by the United Nations' Human Development Index. A period of rapid economic expansion from 1995 onwards became known as the Celtic Tiger period, was brought to an end in 2008 with an unprecedented financial crisis and an economic depression in 2009. According to the 2024 Global Peace Index, Ireland is the second most peaceful country in the world.
Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom with a local executive and assembly
which exercise devolved powers. The executive is jointly headed by the
first and deputy first minister, with the ministries being allocated in
proportion to each party's representation in the assembly. Its capital
is Belfast.
Ultimately political power is held by the UK government,
from which Northern Ireland has gone through intermittent periods of
direct rule during which devolved powers have been suspended. Northern
Ireland elects 18 of the UK House of Commons' 650 MPs. The Northern Ireland Secretary is a cabinet-level post in the British government.
Along with England and Wales and with Scotland, Northern Ireland forms one of the three separate legal jurisdictions of the UK, all of which share the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom as their court of final appeal.
The British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference
provides for co-operation between the Government of Ireland and the
Government of the United Kingdom on all matters of mutual interest,
especially Northern Ireland. In light of the Republic's particular
interest in the governance of Northern Ireland, "regular and frequent"
meetings co-chaired by the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs and the
British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, dealing with
non-devolved matters to do with Northern Ireland and non-devolved all-Ireland issues, are required to take place under the establishing treaty.
The North/South Inter-Parliamentary Association
is a joint parliamentary forum for the island of Ireland. It has no
formal powers but operates as a forum for discussing matters of common
concern between the respective legislatures.
Ireland is located in the north-west of Europe, between latitudes 51° and 56° N, and longitudes 11° and 5° W. It is separated from Great Britain by the Irish Sea and the North Channel, which has a width of 23 kilometres (14 mi) at its narrowest point. To the west is the northern Atlantic Ocean and to the south is the Celtic Sea, which lies between Ireland and Brittany, in France. Ireland has a total area of 84,421 km2 (32,595 sq mi), of which the Republic of Ireland occupies 83 percent. Ireland and Great Britain, together with many nearby smaller islands, are known collectively as the British Isles. As the term British Isles can be controversial in relation to Ireland, the alternate term Britain and Ireland is sometimes used as a neutral term for the islands.
A ring of coastal mountains surrounds low plains at the centre of the island. The highest of these is Carrauntoohil (Irish: Corrán Tuathail) in County Kerry, which rises to 1,039 m (3,409 ft) above sea level. The most arable land lies in the province of Leinster. Western areas are mainly mountainous and rocky with green panoramic vistas. River Shannon, the island's longest river at 360.5 km (224 mi) long, rises in County Cavan in the north-west and flows through Limerick in the midwest.
The island consists of varied geological provinces. In the west, around County Galway and County Donegal, is a medium- to high-grade metamorphic and igneous complex of Caledonide affinity, similar to the Scottish Highlands. Across southeast Ulster and extending southwest to Longford and south to Navan is a province of Ordovician and Silurian rocks, with similarities to the Southern Uplands province of Scotland. Further south, along the County Wexford coastline, is an area of granite intrusives into more Ordovician and Silurian rocks, like that found in Wales.
In the southwest, around Bantry Bay and the mountains of MacGillycuddy's Reeks, is an area of substantially deformed, lightly metamorphosedDevonian-aged rocks. This partial ring of "hard rock" geology is covered by a blanket of Carboniferous
limestone over the centre of the country, giving rise to a
comparatively fertile and lush landscape. The west-coast district of the Burren around Lisdoonvarna has well-developed karst features. Significant stratiform lead-zinc mineralisation is found in the limestones around Silvermines and Tynagh.
Hydrocarbon exploration is ongoing following the first major find at the Kinsale Head gas field off Cork in the mid-1970s. In 1999, economically significant finds of natural gas were made in the Corrib Gas Field off the County Mayo coast. This has increased activity off the west coast in parallel with the "West of Shetland" step-out development from the North Sea hydrocarbon province. In 2000, the Helvick oil field was discovered, which was estimated to contain over 28 million barrels (4,500,000 m3) of oil.
The island's lush vegetation, a product of its mild climate and frequent rainfall, earns it the sobriquet the Emerald Isle. Overall, Ireland has a mild but changeable oceanic climate with few extremes. The climate is typically insular and temperate, avoiding the extremes in temperature of many other areas in the world at similar latitudes. This is a result of the moist winds which ordinarily prevail from the southwestern Atlantic.
Precipitation falls throughout the year but is light overall,
particularly in the east. The west tends to be wetter on average and
prone to Atlantic storms, especially in the late autumn and winter
months. These occasionally bring destructive winds and higher total
rainfall to these areas, as well as sometimes snow and hail. The regions
of north County Galway and east County Mayo have the highest incidents
of recorded lightning annually for the island, with lightning occurring
approximately five to ten days per year in these areas. Munster, in the south, records the least snow whereas Ulster, in the north, records the most.
Inland areas are warmer in summer and colder in winter. Usually around 40 days of the year are below freezing 0 °C(32 °F) at inland weather stations, compared to 10 days at coastal stations. Ireland is sometimes affected by heat waves, most recently in 1995, 2003, 2006, 2013 and 2018. In common with the rest of Europe, Ireland experienced unusually cold weather during the winter of 2010–11. Temperatures fell as low as −17.2 °C (1 °F) in County Mayo on 20 December and up to a metre (3 ft) of snow fell in mountainous areas.
Two red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in Gubbeen, County Cork
Unlike Great Britain which had a land bridge with mainland Europe, Ireland only had an ice bridge ending around 14,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age and as a result, it has fewer land animal and plant species than Great Britain or mainland Europe.There are 55 mammal species in Ireland, and of them, only 26 land mammal species are considered native to Ireland. Some species, such as, the red fox, hedgehog and badger, are very common, whereas others, like the Irish hare, red deer and pine marten
are less so. Aquatic wildlife, such as species of sea turtle, shark,
seal, whale, and dolphin, are common off the coast. About 400 species of
birds have been recorded in Ireland. Many of these are migratory,
including the barn swallow.
Several different habitat types are found in Ireland, including farmland, open woodland, temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, conifer plantations, peat
bogs and a variety of coastal habitats. However, agriculture drives
current land use patterns in Ireland, limiting natural habitat
preserves, particularly for larger wild mammals with greater territorial needs. With no large apex predators
in Ireland other than humans and dogs, such populations of animals as
semi-wild deer that cannot be controlled by smaller predators, such as
the fox, are controlled by annual culling.
There are no snakes in Ireland, and only one species of reptile (the common lizard) is native to the island. Extinct species include the Irish elk, the great auk, brown bear and the wolf. Some previously extinct birds, such as the golden eagle, have been reintroduced after decades of extirpation.
Ireland is now one of the least forested countries in Europe.Until the end of the Middle Ages, Ireland was heavily forested. Native species include deciduous trees such as oak, ash, hazel, birch, alder, willow, aspen, rowan and hawthorn, as well as evergreen trees such Scots pine, yew, holly and strawberry trees. Only about 10% of Ireland today is woodland; most of this is non-native conifer plantations, and only 2% is native woodland. The average woodland cover of European countries is over 33%. In the Republic, about 389,356 hectares (3,893.56 km2) is owned by the state, mainly by the forestry service Coillte. Remnants of native forest can be found scattered around the island, in particular in the Killarney National Park.
Much of the land is now covered with pasture and there are many species of wild-flower. Gorse (Ulex europaeus), a wild furze,
is commonly found growing in the uplands and ferns are plentiful in the
more moist regions, especially in the western parts. It is home to
hundreds of plant species, some of them unique to the island, and has
been "invaded" by some grasses, such as Spartina anglica.
The algal and seaweed flora is that of the cold-temperate variety. The total number of species is 574 The island has been invaded by some algae, some of which are now well established.
Because of its mild climate, many species, including sub-tropical species such as palm trees, are grown in Ireland. Phytogeographically, Ireland belongs to the Atlantic European province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. The island can be subdivided into two ecoregions: the Celtic broadleaf forests and North Atlantic moist mixed forests.
The long history of agricultural production, coupled with modern
intensive agricultural methods such as pesticide and fertiliser use and
runoff from contaminants into streams, rivers and lakes, has placed
pressure on biodiversity in Ireland.
A land of green fields for crop cultivation and cattle rearing limits
the space available for the establishment of native wild species.
Hedgerows, however, traditionally used for maintaining and demarcating
land boundaries, act as a refuge for native wild flora. This ecosystem
stretches across the countryside and acts as a network of connections to
preserve remnants of the ecosystem that once covered the island.
Subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy,
which supported agricultural practices that preserved hedgerow
environments, are undergoing reforms. The Common Agricultural Policy had
in the past subsidised potentially destructive agricultural practices,
for example by emphasising production without placing limits on
indiscriminate use of fertilisers and pesticides; but reforms have
gradually decoupled subsidies from production levels and introduced
environmental and other requirements. 32% of Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions are correlated to agriculture.
Forested areas typically consist of monoculture plantations of
non-native species, which may result in habitats that are not suitable
for supporting native species of invertebrates. Natural areas require
fencing to prevent over-grazing by deer
and sheep that roam over uncultivated areas. Grazing in this manner is
one of the main factors preventing the natural regeneration of forests
across many regions of the country.
Proportion
of respondents to the Ireland census 2011 or the Northern Ireland
census 2011 who stated they were Catholic. Areas in which Catholics are
in the majority are blue. Areas in which Catholics are in a minority are
red.
The population of Ireland is just over 7 million, of which
approximately 5.1 million reside in the Republic of Ireland and 1.9
million reside in Northern Ireland.
The population of Ireland rose rapidly from the 16th century until the mid-19th century, interrupted briefly by the Famine of 1740–41,
which killed roughly two-fifths of the island's population. The
population rebounded and multiplied over the next century, but the Great
Famine of the 1840s caused one million deaths and forced over one
million more to emigrate in its immediate wake. Over the following
century, the population was reduced by over half, at a time when the
general trend in European countries was for populations to rise by an
average of three-fold.
Ireland's largest religious group is Christianity. The largest denomination is Roman Catholicism,
representing over 73% of the island (and about 87% of the Republic of
Ireland). Most of the rest of the population adhere to one of the
various Protestant denominations (about 48% of Northern Ireland). The largest is the AnglicanChurch of Ireland. The Muslim community
is growing in Ireland, mostly through increased immigration, with a 50%
increase in the republic between the 2006 and 2011 census. The island has a small Jewish community. About 4% of the Republic's population and about 14% of the Northern Ireland population describe themselves as of no religion. In a 2010 survey conducted on behalf of the Irish Times, 32% of respondents said they went to a religious service more than once per week.
Traditionally, Ireland is subdivided into four provinces: Connacht (west), Leinster (east), Munster (south), and Ulster (north). In a system that developed between the 13th and 17th centuries, Ireland has 32 traditional counties. Twenty-six of these counties are in the Republic of Ireland, and six are in Northern Ireland.
The six counties that constitute Northern Ireland are all in the
province of Ulster (which has nine counties in total). As such, Ulster
is often used as a synonym for Northern Ireland, although the two are
not coterminous. In the Republic of Ireland, counties form the basis of
the system of local government. Counties Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Tipperary
have been broken up into smaller administrative areas. However, they
are still treated as counties for cultural and some official purposes,
for example, postal addresses and by the Ordnance Survey Ireland. Counties in Northern Ireland are no longer used for local governmental purposes,
but, as in the Republic, their traditional boundaries are still used
for informal purposes such as sports leagues and in cultural or tourism
contexts.
City status in Ireland is decided by legislative or royal charter. Dublin, with over one million residents in the Greater Dublin Area,
is the largest city on the island. Belfast, with 579,726 residents, is
the largest city in Northern Ireland. City status does not directly
equate with population size. For example, Armagh, with 14,590 is the seat of the Church of Ireland and the Roman CatholicPrimate of All Ireland and was re-granted city status by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994 (having lost that status in local government reforms of 1840). In the Republic of Ireland, Kilkenny, the seat of the Butler dynasty, while no longer a city for administrative purposes (since the 2001 Local Government Act), is entitled by law to continue to use the description.
The population of Ireland collapsed dramatically during the second
half of the 19th century. A population of over eight million in 1841 was
reduced to slightly over four million by 1921. In part, the fall in
population was caused by death from the Great Famine of 1845 to 1852,
which took roughly one million lives. The remaining decline of around
three million was due to the entrenched culture of emigration caused by
the dire economic state of the country, lasting until the late 20th
century.
Emigration from Ireland in the 19th century contributed to the
populations of England, the United States, Canada and Australia, in all
of which a large Irish diaspora lives. As of 2006, 4.3 million Canadians, or 14% of the population, were of Irish descent, while around one-third of the Australian population had an element of Irish descent. As of 2013, there were 40 million Irish-Americans and 33 million Americans who claimed Irish ancestry.
With growing prosperity since the last decade of the 20th
century, Ireland became a destination for immigrants. Since the European
Union expanded to include Poland in 2004, Polish people have comprised the largest number of immigrants (over 150,000) from Central Europe. There has also been significant immigration from Lithuania, Czech Republic and Latvia.
The Republic of Ireland in particular has seen large-scale immigration, with 420,000 foreign nationals as of 2006, about 10% of the population. Nearly a quarter of births (24 percent) in 2009 were to mothers born outside of Ireland. Up to 50,000 eastern and central European migrant workers left Ireland in response to the Irish financial crisis.
Proportion of respondents who said they could speak Irish in the Ireland census in 2011 or the Northern Ireland census in 2011
The two official languages of the Republic of Ireland are Irish and
English. Each language has produced noteworthy literature. Irish, though
now only the language of a minority, was the vernacular of the Irish
people for thousands of years and was possibly introduced during the Iron Age.
It began to be written down after Christianisation in the 5th century
and spread to Scotland and the Isle of Man, where it evolved into the Scottish Gaelic and Manx languages, respectively.
The Irish language has a vast treasury of written texts from many centuries and is divided by linguists into Old Irish from the 6th to 10th century, Middle Irish
from the 10th to 13th century, Early Modern Irish until the 17th
century, and the Modern Irish spoken today. It remained the dominant
language of Ireland for most of those periods, having influences from Latin, Old Norse, French
and English. It declined under British rule but remained the majority
tongue until the early 19th century, and since then has been a minority
language.
The Gaelic Revival
of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a long-term influence.
Irish is taught in mainstream Irish schools as a compulsory subject, but
teaching methods have been criticised for their ineffectiveness, with
most students showing little evidence of fluency even after 14 years of
instruction.
There is now a growing population of urban Irish speakers in both the Republic and Northern Ireland, especially in Dublin and Belfast, with the children of such Irish speakers sometimes attending Irish-medium schools (Gaelscoil or Gaelscoileanna). It has been argued that they tend to be more highly educated than monolingual English speakers. Recent research suggests that urban Irish is developing in a direction of its own, both in pronunciation and grammar.
Traditional rural Irish-speaking areas, known collectively as the Gaeltacht, are in linguistic decline. The main Gaeltacht areas are in the west, south-west and north-west, in Galway, Mayo, Donegal, western Cork and Kerry with smaller Gaeltacht areas near Dungarvan in Waterford and in Meath.
English in Ireland
was first introduced during the Norman invasion. It was spoken by a few
peasants and merchants brought over from England and was largely
replaced by Irish before the Tudor conquest of Ireland. It was
introduced as the official language during the Tudor and Cromwellian
conquests. The Ulster plantations gave it a permanent foothold in
Ulster, and it remained the official and upper-class language elsewhere,
the Irish-speaking chieftains and nobility having been deposed.
Language shift during the 19th century replaced Irish with English as
the first language for a vast majority of the population.
Fewer than 2% of the population of the Republic of Ireland today
speak Irish on a daily basis, and under 10% regularly, outside of the
education system
and 38% of those over 15 years are classified as "Irish speakers". In
Northern Ireland, English is the de facto official language, but
official recognition is afforded to Irish, including specific protective
measures under Part III of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. A lesser status (including recognition under Part II of the Charter) is given to Ulster Scots dialects, which are spoken by roughly 2% of Northern Ireland residents, and also spoken by some in the Republic of Ireland.
Since the 1960s with the increase in immigration, many more languages
have been introduced, particularly deriving from Asia and Eastern
Europe.
Ireland's culture comprises elements of the culture of ancient
peoples, later immigrant and broadcast cultural influences (chiefly
Gaelic culture, Anglicisation, Americanisation and aspects of broader European culture). In broad terms, Ireland is regarded as one of the Celtic nations of Europe, alongside Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man and Brittany. This combination of cultural influences is visible in the intricate designs termed Irish interlace or Celtic knotwork.
These can be seen in the ornamentation of medieval religious and
secular works. The style is still popular today in jewellery and graphic
art, as is the distinctive style of traditional Irish music and dance, and has become indicative of modern "Celtic" culture in general.
Religion
has played a significant role in the cultural life of the island since
ancient times (and since the 17th century plantations, has been the
focus of political identity and divisions on the island). Ireland's
pre-Christian heritage fused with the Celtic Church following the
missions of Saint Patrick in the fifth century. The Hiberno-Scottish
missions, begun by the Irish monk Saint Columba, spread the Irish vision
of Christianity to pagan
England and the Frankish Empire. These missions brought written
language to an illiterate population of Europe during the Dark Ages that
followed the fall of Rome, earning Ireland the sobriquet, "the island of saints and scholars".
Since the 20th century Irish pubs worldwide have become outposts of Irish culture, especially those with a full range of cultural and gastronomic offerings.
Ireland has made a substantial contribution to world literature in
all its branches, both in Irish and English. Poetry in Irish is among
the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe, with the earliest examples dating from the 6th century.
Irish remained the dominant literary language down to the 19th century,
despite the spread of English from the 17th century on. Prominent names
from the medieval period and later include Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh (14th century), Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (17th century) and Aogán Ó Rathaille (18th century). Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (c. 1743 – c. 1800)
was an outstanding poet in the oral tradition. The latter part of the
19th century saw a rapid replacement of Irish by English. By 1900, however, cultural nationalists had begun the Gaelic revival, which saw the beginnings of modern literature in Irish. This was to produce a number of notable writers, including Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Máire Mhac an tSaoi and others. Irish-language publishers such as Coiscéim and Cló Iar-Chonnacht continue to produce scores of titles every year.
Modern Irish literature is often connected with its rural heritage through English-language writers such as John McGahern and Seamus Heaney and Irish-language writers such as Máirtín Ó Direáin and others from the Gaeltacht.
James Joyce, one of the most significant writers of the 20th century
Music has been in evidence in Ireland since prehistoric times. Although in the early Middle Ages the church was "quite unlike its counterpart in continental Europe",
there was a considerable interchange between monastic settlements in
Ireland and the rest of Europe that contributed to what is known as Gregorian chant. Outside religious establishments, musical genres in early Gaelic Ireland are referred to as a triad of weeping music (goltraige), laughing music (geantraige) and sleeping music (suantraige). Vocal and instrumental music (e.g. for the harp, pipes, and various string instruments) was transmitted orally, but the Irish harp,
in particular, was of such significance that it became Ireland's
national symbol. Classical music following European models first
developed in urban areas, in establishments of Anglo-Irish rule such as Dublin Castle, St Patrick's Cathedral and Christ Church as well as the country houses of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, with the first performance of Handel's Messiah
(1742) being among the highlights of the baroque era. In the 19th
century, public concerts provided access to classical music to all
classes of society. Yet, for political and financial reasons Ireland has
been too small to provide a living to many musicians, so the names of
the better-known Irish composers of this time belong to emigrants.
Irish traditional music
and dance have seen a surge in popularity and global coverage since the
1960s. In the middle years of the 20th century, as Irish society was
modernising, traditional music had fallen out of favour, especially in
urban areas. However during the 1960s, there was a revival of interest in Irish traditional music led by groups such as the Dubliners, the Chieftains, the Wolfe Tones, the Clancy Brothers, Sweeney's Men and individuals like Seán Ó Riada and Christy Moore. Groups and musicians including Horslips, Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy
incorporated elements of Irish traditional music into contemporary rock
music and, during the 1970s and 1980s, the distinction between
traditional and rock musicians became blurred, with many individuals
regularly crossing over between these styles of playing. This trend can
be seen more recently in the work of artists like Enya, the Saw Doctors, the Corrs, Sinéad O'Connor, Clannad, the Cranberries and the Pogues among others.
The earliest known Irish graphic art and sculpture are Neolithic carvings found at sites such as Newgrange and is traced through Bronze Age artefacts and the religious carvings and illuminated manuscripts
of the medieval period. During the course of the 19th and 20th
centuries, a strong tradition of painting emerged, including such
figures as John Butler Yeats, William Orpen, Jack Yeats and Louis le Brocquy. Contemporary Irish visual artists of note include Sean Scully, Kevin Abosch, and Alice Maher.
The Irish philosopher and theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena was considered one of the leading intellectuals of the early Middle Ages. Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton,
an Irish explorer, was one of the principal figures of Antarctic
exploration. He, along with his expedition, made the first ascent of Mount Erebus and the discovery of the approximate location of the South Magnetic Pole. Robert Boyle was a 17th-century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor and early gentleman scientist. He is largely regarded as one of the founders of modern chemistry and is best known for the formulation of Boyle's law.
Other notable Irish physicists include Ernest Walton, winner of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics. With Sir John Douglas Cockcroft,
he was the first to split the nucleus of the atom by artificial means
and made contributions to the development of a new theory of wave equation. William Thomson, or Lord Kelvin, is the person whom the absolute temperature unit, the kelvin, is named after. Sir Joseph Larmor,
a physicist and mathematician, made innovations in the understanding of
electricity, dynamics, thermodynamics and the electron theory of
matter. His most influential work was Aether and Matter, a book on
theoretical physics published in 1900.
Gaelic football
is the most popular sport in Ireland in terms of match attendance and
community involvement, with about 2,600 clubs on the island. In 2003 it
represented 34% of total sports attendances at events in Ireland and
abroad, followed by hurling at 23%, soccer at 16% and rugby at 8%. The All-Ireland Football Final is the most watched event in the sporting calendar. Soccer is the most widely played team game on the island and the most popular in Northern Ireland.
Other sporting activities with the highest levels of playing
participation include swimming, golf, aerobics, cycling, and
billiards/snooker. Many other sports are also played and followed, including boxing, cricket, fishing, greyhound racing, handball, hockey, horse racing, motor sport, show jumping and tennis.
The island fields a single international team in most sports. One
notable exception to this is association football, although both
associations continued to field international teams under the name
"Ireland" until the 1950s. The sport is also the most notable exception
where the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland field separate international teams. Northern Ireland has produced two World Snooker Champions.
Gaelic football, hurling and Gaelic handball are the best-known Irish
traditional sports, collectively known as Gaelic games. Gaelic games
are governed by the Gaelic Athletic Association
(GAA), with the exception of women's Gaelic football and camogie
(women's variant of hurling), which are governed by separate
organisations. The headquarters of the GAA (and the main stadium) is
located at Croke Park
in north Dublin and has a capacity of 82,500. Many major GAA games are
played there, including the semi-finals and finals of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship and All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship. During the redevelopment of the Lansdowne Road stadium in 2007–2010, international rugby and soccer were played there.
All GAA players, even at the highest level, are amateurs, receiving no
wages, although they are permitted to receive a limited amount of
sport-related income from commercial sponsorship.
The Irish Football Association
(IFA) was originally the governing body for soccer across the island.
The game has been played in an organised fashion in Ireland since the
1870s, with Cliftonville F.C.
in Belfast being Ireland's oldest club. It was most popular, especially
in its first decades, around Belfast and in Ulster. However, some clubs
based outside Belfast thought that the IFA largely favoured
Ulster-based clubs in such matters as selection for the national team.
In 1921, following an incident in which, despite an earlier promise, the
IFA moved an Irish Cup semi-final replay from Dublin to Belfast,
Dublin-based clubs broke away to form the Football Association of the
Irish Free State. Today the southern association is known as the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). Despite being initially blacklisted by the Home Nations' associations, the FAI was recognised by FIFA in 1923 and organised its first international fixture in 1926 (against Italy).
However, both the IFA and FAI continued to select their teams from the
whole of Ireland, with some players earning international caps for
matches with both teams. Both also referred to their respective teams as
Ireland.
In 1950, FIFA directed the associations only to select players from
within their respective territories and, in 1953, directed that the
FAI's team be known only as "Republic of Ireland" and that the IFA's
team be known as "Northern Ireland" (with certain exceptions). Northern
Ireland qualified for the World Cup finals in 1958 (reaching the quarter-finals), 1982 and 1986 and the European Championship in 2016. The Republic qualified for the World Cup finals in 1990 (reaching the quarter-finals), 1994, 2002 and the European Championship in 1988, 2012 and 2016. Across Ireland, there is significant interest in the English and, to a lesser extent, Scottish soccer leagues.
Ireland fields a single national rugby team and a single association, the Irish Rugby Football Union, governs the sport across the island. The Irish rugby team have played in every Rugby World Cup, making the quarter-finals in eight of them. Ireland also hosted games during the 1991 and the 1999 Rugby World Cups (including a quarter-final). There are four professional Irish teams; all four play in the Pro14 and at least three compete for the Heineken Cup.
Irish rugby has become increasingly competitive at both the
international and provincial levels since the sport went professional in
1994. During that time, Ulster (1999), Munster (2006 and 2008) and Leinster (2009, 2011 and 2012) have won the Heineken Cup. In addition to this, the Irish International side has had increased success in the Six Nations Championship against the other European elite sides. This success, including Triple Crowns in 2004, 2006 and 2007, culminated with a clean sweep of victories, known as a Grand Slam, in 2009 and 2018.
Amateur boxing on the island of Ireland is governed by the Irish Athletic Boxing Association. Ireland has won more medals in boxing than in any other Olympic sport. Michael Carruth won a gold medal and Wayne McCullough won a silver medal in the Barcelona Olympic Games. In 2008 Kenneth Egan won a silver medal in the Beijing Games. Paddy Barnes secured bronze in those games and gold in the 2010 European Amateur Boxing Championships (where Ireland came 2nd in the overall medal table) and 2010 Commonwealth Games. Katie Taylor
has won gold in every European and World championship since 2005. In
August 2012 at the Olympic Games in London, Taylor created history by
becoming the first Irish woman to win a gold medal in boxing in the
60 kg lightweight. More recently, Kellie Harrington won a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Horse racing and greyhound racing are both popular in Ireland. There
are frequent horse race meetings and greyhound stadiums are
well-attended. The island is noted for the breeding and training of race
horses and is also a large exporter of racing dogs. The horse racing sector is largely concentrated in the County Kildare.
Irish athletics is an all-Ireland sport governed by Athletics Ireland. Sonia O'Sullivan won two medals at 5,000 metres on the track; gold at the 1995 World Championships and silver at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Gillian O'Sullivan won silver in the 20k walk at the 2003 World Championships, while sprint hurdler Derval O'Rourke
won gold at the 2006 World Indoor Championship in Moscow. Olive
Loughnane won a silver medal in the 20k walk at the World Athletics
Championships in Berlin in 2009.
Golf is very popular, and golf tourism is a major industry attracting more than 240,000 golfing visitors annually. The 2006 Ryder Cup was held at The K Club in County Kildare. Pádraig Harrington became the first Irishman since Fred Daly in 1947 to win the British Open at Carnoustie in July 2007. He successfully defended his title in July 2008 before going on to win the PGA Championship in August.
Harrington became the first European to win the PGA Championship in 78
years and was the first winner from Ireland. Three golfers from Northern
Ireland have been particularly successful. In 2010, Graeme McDowell became the first Irish golfer to win the U.S. Open, and the first European to win that tournament since 1970. Rory McIlroy, at the age of 22, won the 2011 U.S. Open, while Darren Clarke's latest victory was the 2011 Open Championship
at Royal St. George's. In August 2012, McIlroy won his 2nd major
championship by winning the USPGA Championship by a record margin of 8
shots.
Recreation
The west coast of Ireland, Lahinch and Donegal Bay
in particular, have popular surfing beaches, being fully exposed to the
Atlantic Ocean. Donegal Bay is shaped like a funnel and catches
west/south-west Atlantic winds, creating good surf, especially in
winter. Since just before the year 2010, Bundoran has hosted European championship surfing. Scuba diving
is increasingly popular in Ireland with clear waters and large
populations of sea life, particularly along the western seaboard. There
are also many shipwrecks along the coast of Ireland, with some of the
best wreck dives being in Malin Head and off the County Cork coast.
With thousands of lakes, over 14,000 kilometres (8,700 mi) of fish-bearing rivers and over 7,500 kilometres (4,660 mi) of coastline, Ireland is a popular angling destination. The temperate Irish climate is suited to sport angling. While salmon and trout fishing remain popular with anglers, salmon fishing, in particular, received a boost in 2006 with the closing of the salmon driftnet fishery. Coarse fishing continues to increase its profile. Sea angling is developed with many beaches mapped and signposted, and the range of sea angling species is around 80.
Gubbeen cheese, an example of the resurgence in Irish cheese making
Food and cuisine in Ireland take their influence from the crops grown
and animals farmed in the island's temperate climate and from the
social and political circumstances of Irish history. For example, whilst
from the Middle Ages until the arrival of the potato in the 16th
century the dominant feature of the Irish economy was the herding of
cattle, the number of cattle a person owned was equated to their social
standing. Thus herders would avoid slaughtering a milk-producing cow.
For this reason, pork and white meat were more common than beef, and thick fatty strips of salted bacon
(known as rashers) and the eating of salted butter (i.e. a dairy
product rather than beef itself) have been a central feature of the diet
in Ireland since the Middle Ages. The practice of bleeding cattle and mixing the blood with milk and butter (not unlike the practice of the Maasai) was common and black pudding,
made from blood, grain (usually barley) and seasoning, remains a
breakfast staple in Ireland. All of these influences can be seen today
in the phenomenon of the "breakfast roll".
The introduction of the potato in the second half of the 16th
century heavily influenced cuisine thereafter. Great poverty encouraged a
subsistence approach to food, and by the mid-19th century, the vast
majority of the population sufficed with a diet of potatoes and milk. A typical family, consisting of a man, a woman and four children, would eat 18 stone (110 kg) of potatoes per week. Consequently, dishes that are considered as national dishes represent a fundamental simplicity to cooking, such as the Irish stew, bacon and cabbage, boxty, a type of potato pancake, or colcannon, a dish of mashed potatoes and kale or cabbage.
Since the last quarter of the 20th century, with a re-emergence
of wealth in Ireland, a "New Irish Cuisine" based on traditional
ingredients incorporating international influences has emerged. This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish (especially salmon, trout, oysters, mussels and other shellfish), as well as traditional soda breads and the wide range of hand-made cheeses
that are now being produced across the country. An example of this new
cuisine is "Dublin Lawyer": lobster cooked in whiskey and cream. The potato remains however a fundamental feature of this cuisine and the Irish remain the highest per capita consumers of potatoes in Europe. Traditional regional foods can be found throughout the country, for example coddle in Dublin or drisheen in Cork, both a type of sausage, or blaa, a doughy white bread particular to Waterford.
Ireland once dominated the world's market for whiskey, producing 90%
of the world's whiskey at the start of the 20th century. However, as a
consequence of bootleggers during the prohibition in the United States (who sold poor-quality whiskey bearing Irish-sounding names thus eroding the pre-prohibition popularity for Irish brands) and tariffs on Irish whiskey across the British Empire during the Anglo-Irish Trade War of the 1930s, sales of Irish whiskey worldwide fell to a mere 2% by the mid-20th century. In 1953, an Irish government survey, found that 50% of whiskey drinkers in the United States had never heard of Irish whiskey.
Irish whiskey, as researched in 2009 by the CNBC American broadcaster, remains popular domestically and has grown in international sales steadily over a few decades. Typically CNBC states Irish whiskey is not as smoky as a Scotch whisky, but not as sweet as American or Canadian whiskies. Whiskey forms the basis of cream liqueurs, such as Baileys, and the "Irish coffee" (a cocktail of coffee and whiskey reputedly invented at Foynes flying-boat station) is probably the best-known Irish cocktail.
Stout, a kind of porter beer, particularly Guinness,
is typically associated with Ireland, although historically it was more
closely associated with London. Porter remains very popular, although
it has lost sales since the mid-20th century to lager. Cider, particularly Magners (marketed in the Republic of Ireland as Bulmers), is also a popular drink. Red lemonade, a soft-drink, is consumed on its own and as a mixer, particularly with whiskey.
The GDP of the Republic of Ireland as of 2021 was €423.5 billion (nominal), and in Northern Ireland in 2021, it was £52 billion (GVA Balanced). The GDP per capita in the Republic of Ireland was €84,049.9 (nominal) as of 2021, and in Northern Ireland 2021 was £27,154 (GVA Balanced). The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom measure these numbers differently.
Despite the two jurisdictions using two distinct currencies (the euro and pound sterling),
a growing amount of commercial activity is carried out on an
all-Ireland basis. This has been facilitated by the two jurisdictions'
former shared membership of the European Union, and there have been
calls from members of the business community and policymakers for the
creation of an "all-Ireland economy" to take advantage of economies of scale and boost competitiveness.
Regional economics
Below is a comparison of the regional GDP on the island of Ireland.
Below is a comparison of the goods being sold and purchased between
Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, compared with the goods being
exported and imported between Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland:
Northern Ireland Sales/Exports
United Kingdom
Republic of Ireland
2020
£11.3 billion
£4.2 billion
2021
£12.8 billion
£5.2 billion
Northern Ireland Purchases/Imports
United Kingdom
Republic of Ireland
2020
£13.4 billion
£2.5 billion
2021
£14.4 billion
£3.1 billion
Cost of living comparison
Below is a comparison of the monthly cost of living and average wage
after tax in Northern Ireland versus those in the Republic of Ireland in
2023:
Prior to partition in 1921, Ireland had a long history as an economic
colony – first, partially, of the Norse, via their cities (9th to 10th
centuries CE), and later, to varying extents, of polities related to
England. Though the climate and soil favoured certain forms of
agriculture, trade barriers frequently hobbled its development. Repeated invasions and plantations disrupted land-ownership, and multiple failed uprisings also contributed to repeated phases of deportation and of emigration.
Salient events in the economic history of Ireland include:
16th and 17th centuries: confiscation and redistribution of land in the Plantations of Ireland
1845–1849: The Great Famine occasioned depopulation and mass emigration
1846: Westminster's repeal of the Corn Laws disrupted Irish agriculture
The Dublin region receives the most tourists and is home to several of the most popular attractions such as the Guinness Storehouse and Book of Kells. The west and south west, which includes the Lakes of Killarney and the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry and Connemara and the Aran Islands in County Galway, are also popular tourist destinations.
Although for most of their existence electricity networks in the
Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were entirely separate, the
island has operated for some time as a single market for electricity. Both networks were designed and constructed independently post-partition but they are now connected with three interlinks
and are also connected through Great Britain to mainland Europe. The
situation in Northern Ireland is complicated by the issue of private
companies not supplying Northern Ireland Electricity with enough power. In the Republic of Ireland, the ESB
has failed to modernise its power stations, and the availability of
power plants has recently averaged only 66%, one of the worst such rates
in Western Europe. EirGrid has started building a HVDC transmission line between Ireland and Great Britain with a capacity of 500 MW, about 10% of Ireland's peak demand.
As with electricity, the natural gas distribution network is also now all-island, with a pipeline linking Gormanston, County Meath, and Ballyclare, County Antrim. Most of Ireland's gas comes through interconnectors between Twynholm in Scotland and Ballylumford, County Antrim and Loughshinny,
County Dublin. Supplies come from the Corrib Gas Field, off the coast
of County Mayo, with a supply previously also coming from the Kinsale
gas field off the County Cork coast. The County Mayo field faces some localised opposition over a controversial decision to refine the gas onshore.
Turf-cutting near Maam Cross by the road to Leenane, County Galway
Ireland has an ancient industry based on peat (known locally as "turf") as a source of energy for home fires. A form of biomass
energy, this source of heat is still widely used in rural areas.
However, because of the ecological importance of peatlands in storing
carbon and their rarity, the EU is attempting to protect this habitat by
fining Ireland for digging up peat. In cities, heat is generally
supplied by natural gas or heating oil, although some urban suppliers distribute sods of turf as "smokeless fuel" for domestic use.
The Republic has a strong commitment to renewable energy and ranks as one of the top 10 markets for clean-technology investment in the 2014 Global Green Economy Index. Research and development in renewable energy (such as wind power) has increased since 2004. Large wind farms have been constructed
in Cork, Donegal, Mayo and Antrim. The construction of wind farms has
in some cases been delayed by opposition from local communities, some of
whom regard the wind turbines
as unsightly. The Republic is hindered by an ageing network that was
not designed to handle the varying availability of power that comes from
wind farms. The ESB's Turlough Hill facility is the only power-storage facility in the state.
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