Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland
Anthem: Various
Location of Northern Ireland (dark green) – in Europe (green & dark grey) – in the United Kingdom (green)
Location of Northern Ireland (dark green)

– in Europe (green & dark grey)
– in the United Kingdom (green)

StatusCountry
Capital
and largest city
Belfast
54°35′46″N 5°55′48″W / 54.596°N 5.93°W / 54.596; -5.93
Official languages
Regional and minority languagesUlster Scots
Ethnic groups
(2021)[3]
List
Religion
(2021)[4]
List
GovernmentConsociational devolved legislature within a parliamentary constitutional monarchy
• Monarch
Charles III
Michelle O'Neill
Emma Little-Pengelly
Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Secretary of StateHilary Benn
• House of Commons18 MPs (of 650)
LegislatureNorthern Ireland Assembly
Devolution
3 May 1921
18 July 1973
17 July 1974
19 November 1998
Area
• Total[b]
14,330 km2 (5,530 sq mi)[5]
• Land[a]
13,547 km2 (5,231 sq mi)[6]
Population
• 2022 estimate
1,910,543[6]
• 2021 census
1,903,175[7]
• Density
141/km2 (365.2/sq mi)[6]
GVA2022 estimate
 • Total£49.9 billion
 • Per capita£26,119[8]
GDP (nominal)2022 estimate
• Total
£56.7 billion
• Per capita
£29,674[9]
HDI (2022)Increase 0.907[10]
very high
CurrencyPound sterling (GBP; £)
Time zoneUTC+0 (GMT)
• Summer (DST)
UTC+1 (BST)
Date formatdd/mm/yyyy (AD)
Drives onleft
Calling code+44[c]
ISO 3166 codeGB-NIR
  1. The official and de jure flag of Northern Ireland is the Union Jack.[11] The Ulster Banner was used by the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1953 until the latter was abolished in 1973. The Ulster Banner is still used by some organisations and entities and is used to represent Northern Ireland when it plays as a national sports team. See Northern Ireland flags issue for more.

Northern Ireland (Irish: Tuaisceart Éireann [ˈt̪ˠuəʃcəɾˠt̪ˠ ˈeːɾʲən̪ˠ] ⓘ;[12] Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland that is variously described as a country, province or region.[13][14][15][16][17] Northern Ireland shares an open border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. At the 2021 census, its population was 1,903,175,[7] making up around 3% of the UK's population and 27% of the population on the island of Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly, established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998, holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the UK Government. The government of Northern Ireland cooperates with the government of Ireland in several areas under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.[18] The Republic of Ireland also has a consultative role on non-devolved governmental matters through the British–Irish Governmental Conference (BIIG).[19]

Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating a devolved government for the six northeastern counties. As was intended by unionists and their supporters in Westminster, Northern Ireland had a unionist majority, who wanted to remain in the United Kingdom;[20] they were generally the Protestant descendants of colonists from Britain. Meanwhile, the majority in Southern Ireland (which became the Irish Free State in 1922), and a significant minority in Northern Ireland, were Irish nationalists (generally Catholics) who wanted a united independent Ireland.[21] Today, the former generally see themselves as British and the latter generally see themselves as Irish, while a Northern Irish or Ulster identity is claimed by a significant minority from all backgrounds.[22]

The creation of Northern Ireland was accompanied by violence both in defence of and against partition. During the conflict of 1920–22, the capital Belfast saw major communal violence, mainly between Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist civilians.[23] More than 500 were killed[24] and more than 10,000 became refugees, mostly Catholics.[25] For the next fifty years, Northern Ireland had an unbroken series of Unionist Party governments.[26] There was informal mutual segregation by both communities,[27] and the Unionist governments were accused of discrimination against the Irish nationalist and Catholic minority.[28] In the late 1960s, a campaign to end discrimination against Catholics and nationalists was opposed by loyalists, who saw it as a republican front.[29] This unrest sparked the Troubles, a thirty-year conflict involving republican and loyalist paramilitaries and state forces, which claimed over 3,500 lives and injured 50,000 others.[30][31] The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was a major step in the peace process, including paramilitary disarmament and security normalisation, although sectarianism and segregation remain major social problems, and sporadic violence has continued.[32]

The economy of Northern Ireland was the most industrialised in Ireland at the time of partition, but soon began to decline, exacerbated by the political and social turmoil of the Troubles.[33] Its economy has grown significantly since the late 1990s. Unemployment in Northern Ireland peaked at 17.2% in 1986, but dropped back down to below 10% in the 2010s,[34] similar to the rate of the rest of the UK.[35] Cultural links between Northern Ireland, the rest of Ireland, and the rest of the UK are complex, with Northern Ireland sharing both the culture of Ireland and the culture of the United Kingdom. In many sports, there is an All-Ireland governing body or team for the whole island; the most notable exception is association football. Northern Ireland competes separately at the Commonwealth Games, and people from Northern Ireland may compete for either Great Britain or Ireland at the Olympic Games.

  1. ^ Ainsworth, Paul (6 December 2022). "'Historic milestone' passed as Irish language legislation becomes law". The Irish News. Archived from the original on 12 December 2022. Retrieved 7 December 2022.
  2. ^ "Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022 publications – Parliamentary Bills – UK Parliament". Archived from the original on 29 May 2022. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  3. ^ "MS-B01 Ethnic group". Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. 30 November 2023. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  4. ^ "MS-B21 Religion - full detail". Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. 31 May 2023. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  5. ^ "Standard Area Measurements for Administrative Areas (December 2023) in the UK". Open Geography Portal. Office for National Statistics. 31 May 2024. Retrieved 7 June 2024.
  6. ^ a b c "Mid-Year Population Estimates, UK, June 2022". Office for National Statistics. 26 March 2024. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
  7. ^ a b "2021 Census". Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  8. ^ "Regional gross value added (balanced) per head and income components". Office for National Statistics. 24 April 2024. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
  9. ^ "Regional gross domestic product: all ITL regions". Office for National Statistics. 24 April 2024. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
  10. ^ "Subnational HDI". Global Data Lab. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
  11. ^ "The Flags Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000". Government of the United Kingdom. 8 November 2000. Archived from the original on 2 September 2013. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
  12. ^ Tuaisceart Éireann. Archived 15 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine. DFA.ie. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  13. ^ "A Beginners Guide to UK Geography (2023)". Open Geography Portal. Office for National Statistics. 24 August 2023. Retrieved 9 December 2023.
  14. ^ "Standard: ISO 3166 — Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions". ISO. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  15. ^ Dunn, S.; H. Dawson (2000), An Alphabetical Listing of Word, Name and Place in Northern Ireland and the Living Language of Conflict, Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, One specific problem – in both general and particular senses – is to know what to call Northern Ireland itself: in the general sense, it is not a country, or a province, or a state – although some refer to it contemptuously as a statelet: the least controversial word appears to be jurisdiction, but this might change.
  16. ^ Whyte, J.; G. FitzGerald (1991), Interpreting Northern Ireland, Oxford: Oxford University Press, One problem must be adverted to in writing about Northern Ireland. This is the question of what name to give to the various geographical entities. These names can be controversial, with the choice often revealing one's political preferences. ... some refer to Northern Ireland as a 'province'. That usage can arouse irritation particularly among nationalists, who claim the title 'province' should be properly reserved to the four historic provinces of Ireland-Ulster, Leinster, Munster, and Connacht. If I want to a label to apply to Northern Ireland I shall call it a 'region'. Unionists should find that title as acceptable as 'province': Northern Ireland appears as a region in the regional statistics of the United Kingdom published by the British government.
  17. ^ Murphy, D. (1979), A Place Apart, London: Penguin Books, Next – what noun is appropriate to Northern Ireland? 'Province' won't do since one-third of the province is on the wrong side of the border. 'State' implies more self-determination than Northern Ireland has ever had and 'country' or 'nation' are blatantly absurd. 'Colony' has overtones that would be resented by both communities and 'statelet' sounds too patronizing, though outsiders might consider it more precise than anything else; so one is left with the unsatisfactory word 'region'.
  18. ^ Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Government of Ireland (1998), Northern Ireland Peace Agreement (The Good Friday Agreement), archived from the original on 21 February 2013, retrieved 3 June 2013
  19. ^ Forde, Eoin (2020). "Constitutional Models of a United Ireland". Academia: 16–17. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  20. ^ David McKittrick & David McVea. Making Sense of the Troubles. New Amsterdam Books, 2002. p.5
  21. ^ Richard Jenkin, 1997, Rethinking ethnicity: arguments and explorations, SAGE Publications: London: "In Northern Ireland the objectives of contemporary nationalists are the reunification of Ireland and the removal of British government."; Peter Dorey, 1995, British politics since 1945, Blackwell Publishers: Oxford: "Just as some Nationalists have been prepared to use violence in order to secure Irish reunification, so some Unionists have been prepared to use violence in order to oppose it."; "Strategy Framework Document: Reunification through Planned Integration: Sinn Féin's All Ireland Agenda". Archived from the original on 16 July 2006. Sinn Féin. Retrieved 2 August 2008.; "Policy Summaries: Constitutional Issues". Social Democratic and Labour Party. Archived from the original on 18 June 2009. Retrieved 2 August 2008.
  22. ^ "Which of these best describes the way you think of yourself?". Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey. 2014. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  23. ^ Lynch (2019), pp. 11, 100–101.
  24. ^ Lynch (2019), p. 99.
  25. ^ Lynch (2019), pp. 171–176.
  26. ^ David McKittrick & David McVea. Making Sense of the Troubles. New Amsterdam Books, 2002. p.6
  27. ^ McKittrick & McVea, p.18
  28. ^ Gallagher, Tom. Contemporary Irish Studies. Manchester University Press, 1983. pp.29–32
  29. ^ Maney, Gregory. "The Paradox of Reform: The Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland", in Nonviolent Conflict and Civil Resistance. Emerald Group Publishing, 2012. p.15
  30. ^ "CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths". cain.ulster.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 18 November 2018. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  31. ^ "CAIN: Northern Ireland Society – Security and Defence". cain.ulster.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 26 February 2019. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  32. ^ "The troubles were over, but the killing continued. Some of the heirs to Ireland's violent traditions refused to give up their inheritance." Jack Holland: Hope against History: The Course of Conflict in Northern Ireland. Henry Holt & Company, 1999, p. 221; ISBN 0-8050-6087-1
  33. ^ McCourt, Malachy (2004). History of Ireland. New York: MJF Books, Fine Communications. p. 324. ISBN 978-1-60671-037-1.
  34. ^ Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Investment: Full Economic Overview, 15 October 2014 Archived 7 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  35. ^ Larry Elliott (17 September 2014). "UK unemployment rate falls to lowest level since 2008 financial crisis". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 15 August 2021. Retrieved 12 December 2016.


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