The magnificent scenery of Ireland's Atlantic coastline faces a 2,000-mile- (3,200-km-) wide expanse of ocean, and its geographic isolation has helped it to develop a rich heritage of culture and tradition that was linked initially to the Gaelic language. Washed by abundant rain, the country's pervasive grasslands create a green-hued landscape that is responsible for the popular sobriquet Emerald Isle. Ireland is also renowned for its wealth of folklore, from tales of tiny leprechauns with hidden pots of gold to that of the patron saint, Patrick, with his legendary ridding the island of snakes and his reputed use of the three-leaved shamrock as a symbol for the Christian Trinity. But while many may think of Ireland as an enchanted land, the republic has been beset with perennial concerns—emigration, cultural and political identity, and relations with Northern Ireland (comprising the 6 of Ireland's 32 counties within the province of Ulster that remain part of the United Kingdom). At the beginning of the 21st century, however, Ireland's long-standing economic problems seemed to be abating, owing to a newly diverse, export-driven economy.

The emergence of Ireland as an independent country is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the 17th century, political power was widely shared among a rather loosely constructed network of small earldoms in often-shifting alliances. Following the so-called “Flight of the Earls” after an unsuccessful uprising in the early 17th century, Ireland effectively became an English colony. The island became an integral part of the United Kingdom from 1800 to 1922, when, by virtue of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 6, 1921, the Irish Free State was established as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. Independence came in 1937, but Ireland remained a member of the British Commonwealth until 1948. Since then, Ireland has become integrated with the rest of western Europe, joining the European Union but generally retaining a neutral role in international affairs.

Dependent on agriculture and subject to extremes of climate, Ireland was long among Europe's poorest regions, a principal cause of mass migration from Ireland, especially during the cycle of famine in the 19th century. Some 40 million Americans trace their ancestry to Ireland as a result of that traumatic exodus, as do millions of others throughout the world. Every year members of this diaspora visit their ancestral homeland and forge connections with long-lost family.

Although Ireland is now both urbanized and Europeanized, its culture retains many unique characteristics, and its people prize folkloric and social traditions that largely derive from and celebrate the country's rural past. In "Meditations in Time of Civil War" William Butler Yeats (Yeats, William Butler), perhaps Ireland's best-known poet, evokes the idyllic and idealized countryside, a place central to the memories of the country's millions of expatriates and their descendants:

The republic of Ireland occupies the greater part of an island lying to the west of Great Britain, from which it is separated—at distances ranging from 11 to 120 miles (18 to 193 km)—by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St. George's Channel. Located in the temperate zone between latitudes 51°30′ and 55°30′ N and longitudes 6°00′ and 10°30′ W—as far north as Labrador or British Columbia in Canada and as far west as the West African state of Liberia—it constitutes the westernmost outpost of the Atlantic fringe of the Eurasian landmass. Ireland, which, like Great Britain, once formed part of this landmass, lies on the European continental shelf, surrounded by seas that are generally less than 650 feet (200 metres) deep. The greatest distance from north to south in the island is 302 miles (486 km), and from east to west it is 171 miles (275 km).

The coastal mountain fringe illustrates the country's complex geologic history. In the west and northwest as well as in the east, the mountains are composed mainly of granite. Old Red Sandstone predominates in the south, where the parallel folded mountain ridges trend east-west, separated by limestone river valleys. Ireland experienced at least two general glaciations—one covering most of the country and the other extending as far south as a line linking Limerick, Cashel, and Dublin—and the characteristic diversity of Irish scenery owes much to this glacial influence. The large areas of peat bog to be found throughout the country are a notable feature of the landscape.

The rivers that rise on the seaward side of the coastal mountain fringe are naturally short and rapid. The inland streams, however, flow slowly, often through marshes and lakes, and enter the sea—usually by way of waterfalls and rapids—long distances from their sources. The famed River Shannon (Shannon, River), for example, rises in the plateau country near Sligo Bay and flows sluggishly south-southwestward for some 160 miles (260 km), reaching tidewater level at Limerick and draining a wide area of the central lowland on its way. Other major inland rivers—some of them renowned for their salmon fisheries—are the Slaney (Slaney, River), Liffey (Liffey, River), and Boyne (Boyne, River) in the east; the Nore, Barrow (Barrow, River), and Suir (Suir, River) in the southeast; the Blackwater (Blackwater, River), Lee, and Bandon (Bandon, River) in the south; and the Clare and the Moy in the west. Because of the porosity of the underlying Carboniferous (Carboniferous Period) limestones, an underground drainage system has developed, feeding the interlacing surface network of rivers and lakes. The government has implemented major arterial drainage projects, preventing flooding—and making more land available for cultivation—by improving the flow of water in the rivers and thereby lowering the levels of lakes. There are also state-aided farm drainage schemes designed to bring wasteland and marginal land into production.

Most Irish soils originate from drift, the ice-scoured waste formerly frozen to the base of the advancing glaciers. Some older rocks in the country's geologic formation—quartzites, certain granites, and shales—weather into infertile and unproductive soils. In many places, however, these have been overlaid by patches of the ice-borne drift, mostly limestone-bearing, which are farmed with considerable success. The bare limestone regions remaining in western areas show how much glacial drift cover has meant to the Irish agricultural economy.

Ireland's climate is classified as western maritime. The predominant influence is the Atlantic Ocean, which is no more than 70 miles (112 km) from any inland location. The mild southwesterly winds and warm waters of the North Atlantic Current contribute to the moderate quality of the climate. Temperature is almost uniform over the entire island. Average air temperatures lie mainly between limits of 39 and 45 °F (4 and 7 °C) in January and February, the coldest months of the year. In July and August, the warmest months, temperatures usually range between 57 and 61 °F (14 and 16 °C), although occasionally considerably higher readings are recorded. The sunniest months are May and June, when there is sunshine for an average duration of 5.5 and 6.5 hours a day, respectively, over most of the country and the ancient patchwork of fields and settlements making up the landscape glows under a clear, vital light. Average annual precipitation varies from about 30 inches (760 mm) in the east to more than 100 inches (2,533 mm) in the western areas exposed to the darkening clouds that often come scudding in from the Atlantic. The precipitation, combined with the equable climate, is particularly beneficial to the grasslands, which are the mainstay of the country's large livestock population. Snow is infrequent except in the mountains, and prolonged or severe snowstorms are rare.

Ireland was almost completely covered by glaciers during the ice age, and its plant and animal life are thus mainly—but not entirely—the result of the subsequent migration of species from other areas. As long as there was a land connection between Ireland and what was to become the rest of the British Isles, most species arrived overland from northern Europe. Irish plant and animal life nevertheless possess certain unique features owing partly to climatic conditions and partly to the fact that Ireland became separated from Britain by the Irish Sea sometime before Britain itself became separated from the European continent.

Apart from flora that came from northern Europe, several plants common in Ireland are believed to have reached the country from the Mediterranean, along a subsequently drowned coastal route, and others appear to have arrived from North America, probably by way of Greenland and Iceland. The western highlands are home to such hardy species as St. Dabeoc's heath, Irish spurge, Eriocaulon aquaticum (a pipewort with North American affinities), and the Irish orchid (a species of Mediterranean origin). Scattered over the island are sundew, foxglove, bell heather, sheep's bit, bog asphodel, and yellow fleabane—yet it is Ireland's extensive and verdant grasslands that leave the most lasting impression. Prior to the 17th century the Irish midlands had great forests of broad-leaved trees, but by the end of the 19th century the once large forests had been reduced to about 1 percent of the total land area. Now the island is mainly devoid of broad-leaved woodlands, and government-sponsored reforestation programs have chiefly favoured fast-growing sitka spruce.

Common English animals such as the weasel and the mole do not exist in Ireland, which also has no snakes. Tradition ascribes the absence of snakes to banishment at the hands of St. Patrick (Patrick, Saint); in fact, before their introduction as pets and in zoos in the 20th century, snakes had not lived on the island for the thousands of years since the Ice Age. In addition, there are only two kinds of mice—as opposed to four in Britain—and the only reptile found in Ireland is a species of lizard. Endemic mammals include the Irish stoat and Irish hare. Deer have increased in number since the mid-19th century, but the giant Irish elk has long been extinct. Ireland abounds in birdlife, notably waterfowl. Numerous species that breed in Iceland and Greenland in the summer spend winter in Ireland, and many more migratory species stop there in the spring and fall.

Although Ireland was invaded and colonized within historical times by Celts, Norsemen, Normans, English, and Scots, there are no corresponding ethnic distinctions. Ethnic and racial minorities make up less than 5 percent of the population. However, immigration from Europe, Africa, and Asia was significant in the last two decades of the 20th century. Although they are small in number, the nomadic Travellers (“Tinkers”) are perhaps the most prominent ethnic minority group.

The constitution provides that Irish (Irish language) be the first official language and English the second. All official documents are published in both Irish and English. The modern Irish language, which is very similar to Scottish Gaelic, was widely spoken up to the time of the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and the subsequent emigrations. The use of Irish continued to decline even after 1922, when the language was introduced into schools; despite its decline, Irish never ceased to exert a strong influence on Irish consciousness. Although its use as a vernacular has decreased and is concentrated in several small Gaeltacht (i.e., Irish-speaking) areas, Irish is more widely read, spoken, and understood today than it had been during most of the 20th century. English is universally spoken.

The Celtic religion had a major influence on Ireland long before the adoption of Christianity in the 5th century. Its precise rituals and beliefs remain somewhat obscure, but the names of hundreds of Celtic gods have survived, and elements of the religion—particularly the cults of Mary (an echo of Danu, the Earth Mother goddess whom the Celts worshiped) and St. Brigit (Brigit of Ireland, Saint) (one of Ireland's patron saints) and several seasonal festivals—carried into the Christian period.

Since the conversion to Christianity, Roman Catholicism, with its ecclesiastical seat at Armagh in Northern Ireland, has been the island's principal religion. After the Reformation, Catholicism became closely associated with Irish nationalism and resistance to British rule. However, church support for nationalism—both then and now—has been ambivalent. After the devastating Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s, there was a remarkable surge in devotional support of the Catholic church, and over the next century the number of Irish priests, nuns, and missionaries grew dramatically.

The country's size contributes to its homogeneity and helps explain its distinctive character. This homogeneity also has worked against the development of significant regional or local divisions. One regional distinction is that between the part of the country east of the River Shannon (Shannon, River)—with its industrial employment, fertile farmlands, economic growth, and rising standard of living—and the poorer areas of the west—particularly west Donegal, Leitrim, west Mayo, west Galway, Clare, west Cork, and south Kerry—where incomes were traditionally low (though they are now supplemented by industrial development and tourism) and the fertility of the land was in many cases insufficient to provide an acceptable standard of living for the people. These western areas include the districts known collectively as the Gaeltacht, in which the Irish language and the traditional national culture are best preserved. Emigration abroad or to cities within Ireland has always been among the chief threats to the survival of this cultural heritage.

The republic's marriage, birth, and death rates are comparable to those of nearby countries. For example, life expectancy is about 75 years for men and 80 for women. Historically, the rate of emigration—which had been greatly in excess of the next highest rate in Europe—depleted Ireland's population. As a result of emigration, hundreds of thousands of Irish-born people now live outside their native land, and millions of citizens of other countries are of Irish extraction. However, in the 1990s immigration to Ireland outpaced emigration from the country. New immigrants included a large number of Irish Americans moving back to the country.

When Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC; now the European Union 【EU】) in 1973, more than half of its trade was with the United Kingdom. Although this proportion has declined, economic relations between the two countries have remained close.

Ireland's high-technology sector spurred economic growth during the 1990s and helped reduce unemployment to historically low levels. The economic boom, during which the country's growth was more than double that of most other EU countries, led some analysts to label the country the “Celtic Tiger.”

Most of the gross agricultural output consists of livestock and livestock products, with beef as the biggest single item, followed by milk and pigs. Other important products are cereals (particularly barley and wheat), poultry and eggs, sheep and wool, and root crops, including sugar beets and potatoes. Indeed, enough beets are grown to meet the country's sugar requirements. Since the 1980s farmhouse cheese production has flourished, and other specialized food production (e.g., organically produced vegetables) has increased. The bloodstock ( Thoroughbred) industry is a thriving economic sector and has won worldwide fame for the Irish racehorse.

Adverse conditions in export markets following World War II handicapped the expansion of Irish agriculture, and the subsequent growth of agricultural output was slower than that in the industrial and service sectors. This situation was ameliorated with the republic's entrance into the EEC in 1973. After a two-decade decline, farm incomes began to rise in the 1990s.

When Ireland was established as an independent country in 1922, woodland represented less than 1 percent of the total land area, but state replanting since World War II has increased almost eightfold the acreage under forests and woodlands. Private afforestation efforts also increased in the late 20th century. A state agency was established in 1988 to manage the republic's commercial forestry. Sea fishing and aquaculture resources have been developed since the mid-20th century, but, because the most extensive fishing grounds in the EU are off Ireland's shores, international competition is intense.

Ireland is not rich in mineral resources. Discoveries of silver, lead, zinc, and gypsum have been successfully developed, but the country's dependence on imports for its energy requirements is high. In the early 1980s offshore natural gas wells began production in the Celtic Sea south of County Cork. The offshore reserves were limited, however, and a pipeline from Britain was built in the 1990s to provide replacement supplies.

For centuries hand-cut peat, or turf, was the rural population's principal domestic fuel. Virtually all rural households are now connected to the national electricity network, which relies partly on hydroelectric plants and on small and medium-sized peat-burning thermal power stations. Although peat production was mechanized and industrialized in the 20th century, peat was largely supplanted by natural gas and by coal and oil imports.

Until World War II and for some years after it, official manufacturing policy was nationalistic and protectionist. High tariffs and quotas protected young industries, which provided badly needed employment and helped to supply the home market but which had little or no export potential. From the mid-1950s onward the protectionist policies were progressively reversed. The principal basis of the government's Programmes for Economic Expansion was an industrial development policy designed—by means of tax concessions, financial grants, and other incentives—first, to encourage existing industries to increase their competitive strength and seek markets abroad and, second, to attract new manufacturing enterprises, whether foreign or Irish-owned, to the republic.

The policy achieved a large measure of success. By the late 20th century a larger proportion of the labour force was employed in manufacturing than in agriculture, and the industrial sector accounted for most of Ireland's total export earnings. A competitive economy has become all the more desirable in view of the governmental obligation to demobilize protective tariffs in accordance with the single European market and the World Trade Organization. Since the 1970s computer and software equipment and international financial and other services have become important economic sectors.

The Irish pound (or punt) was linked to the British pound sterling until 1979, when the republic joined the European Monetary System. Today, the euro, the EU's single currency, is the country's official currency. The Central Bank of Ireland, established in 1942, is the national monetary authority. Its responsibilities include licensing and overseeing the country's financial institutions and supervising the Irish Stock Exchange. The bank does not transact business with the public, but it exerts a considerable influence on the volume of bank credit through the “advice” it gives to the clearing (or, to use the Irish term, the associated) banks. The Irish Stock Exchange, located in central Dublin, is one of the oldest in the world, having traded continuously since 1793.

The United Kingdom remains Ireland's chief trading partner. Other major partners include the other countries of the EU (notably Germany, France, and The Netherlands), the United States, Japan, and Singapore. A wide range of manufactured products is exported, including electrical machinery and apparatus, processed foods, chemical products, clothing and textiles, and beverages. Ireland is among the world's leading exporters of computer software. The principal imports include machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, petroleum and petroleum products, food products, and textiles.

Tourism is the largest component of the country's net invisible earnings. Its value has increased considerably since the 1950s, in large part because of the promotional efforts of the Irish Tourist Board (Bord Fáilte Éireann) and that body's work in encouraging new hotel construction, developing resort areas, extending sporting facilities, and increasing tourist amenities. The board also has developed joint ventures with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board. The vast majority of foreign tourists come from the United Kingdom, though many also come from other EU countries and the United States.

Almost all Irish trade unions are affiliated with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). The level of unionization in Ireland is fairly high, encompassing roughly one-third of the total workforce. There are also several employers' unions (industrial organizations), organized on both a craft and a regional basis. The employers' central negotiating organization is the Irish Business and Employers Confederation. Wages and employment conditions are normally subject to free collective bargaining, though industrial disputes may be referred to the Labour Relations Commission (created in 1990) or to the Labour Court (set up in 1946). In the late 1980s, when the economy faced serious problems, the government, employers, and unions agreed on a recovery program. Similar partnerships were adopted in the 1990s and have become a feature of the country's economic and social management.

Compared with the rest of the industrialized world, Ireland has relatively low rates of corporate and individual income taxes. In contrast, the country's value-added (consumption) tax (VAT) is fairly high and is charged on most goods and services.

As a result of its scattered rural population, Ireland has a large road system. Most local roads are well-surfaced, and continuous progress has been made toward bringing the arterial roads up to the best modern standards. Ireland has benefited from funds received from the EU to improve and develop its transportation infrastructure.

The Irish Transport System (Córas Iompair Éireann) has financial control over three autonomous operating companies—Irish Rail (Iarnród Éireann), Dublin Bus (Bus Átha Cliath), and Irish Bus (Bus Éireann). An electrified commuter rail system, the Dublin Area Rapid Transport, opened in Dublin in 1984. There are rail services between the principal cities and towns (including a link with Northern Ireland Railways via Belfast), but many branch lines have become uneconomic and have been replaced by road services for passengers and goods.

There is no longer any significant commercial traffic on Irish canals. The two major canals in the country—the Royal Canal, which joins the River Shannon with the Irish Sea via Mullingar and Dublin, and the Grand Canal, which also runs from the Shannon to the Irish Sea but with a branch to the River Barrow—are maintained for use by pleasure craft. The successful restoration in the 1990s of the Shannon-Erne waterway in the northwest led to the redevelopment of other waterways in the republic and in Northern Ireland.

International airports are located at Dublin, Shannon, and Cork, and there are several regional airports. Aer Rianta, a public limited-liability company, has responsibility for the operation, management, and development of the three major international airports. Shannon was the world's first duty-free airport; a state-sponsored company offers substantial tax breaks and other advantages to manufacturing and warehousing concerns proposing to establish plants within the entire Shannon (midwestern) region. Aer Lingus is the national airline.

Until the deregulation of the telecommunications sector in Ireland in 1998, the market was dominated by the state-owned Telecom Éireann (now Éircom), which subsequently formed Telecom Ireland, a subsidiary that focused its efforts on attracting foreign investment. Since deregulation, major telecommunications companies such as Norway's Telenor, British Telecom, and AT&T have operated extensively throughout Ireland. In 1997 the Irish government established the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation. The office is responsible for ensuring that the liberalized telecommunications sector works in accordance with EU and Irish law. Internet use grew rapidly during the late 1990s. Whereas in 1997 less than 5 percent of the population had Internet access, less than five years later the number had grown to about one-third of the total population.

The Irish republic is a parliamentary democracy. Its constitution was promulgated in 1937 and can be amended through a referendum. The country's head of state, the president (uachtarán), is elected directly by the public for a term of seven years and is eligible for reelection for a second term. The president normally acts on the advice of the government but also consults an advisory Council of State in the exercise of certain functions. The president signs and promulgates bills passed by the Oireachtas (Parliament) and, when so advised by the prime minister (taoiseach), summons and dissolves the Oireachtas. The president may, however, refuse to dissolve the Oireachtas on the advice of a prime minister who has ceased to command a majority in the Dáil Éireann (House of Representatives). The president is the guardian of the constitution and may, in certain circumstances, submit a bill passed by the Oireachtas to the people in a referendum or refer it to the Supreme Court to decide on its constitutionality.

There are two houses of the Oireachtas—the Dáil and the Seanad Éireann (Senate). Chief legislative power is centred in the 166-member Dáil. The Seanad may delay bills passed by the Dáil, or it may suggest changes in them, but it cannot indefinitely block their passage into law.

Executive power is vested in the prime minister, who heads the cabinet and presides over its meetings. The prime minister, the deputy prime minister (tánaiste), and the minister for finance must be members of the Dáil. The other government ministers must be members of either house, but no more than two may be senators.

The local government system comprises five county borough corporations, five borough corporations in the major cities, and 29 county councils, as well as numerous urban district councils and boards of town commissioners. Each of these is elected at regular intervals by universal adult suffrage. Of the 29 county councils, only 24 represent whole counties. For administrative purposes, the traditional County Tipperary is divided into a North Riding and a South Riding, each having a county council, and Dublin also is divided, among three county councils (Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin). County councils and county borough corporations are responsible for physical planning, roads, sewerage and water supplies, housing, public libraries, fire services, and courthouses. Local government authorities in the republic have no functions in relation to police or education.

Important policy decisions (e.g., on local taxes, borrowing, and the making of bylaws) are made by the elected councils. Administration, on the other hand, is the responsibility of the county (or city) manager, who usually consults with members of the council before discharging important executive functions. There is a city manager for each county borough council, and for each county council there is a county manager, who also acts as manager for the lesser local authorities within the county. Noncounty boroughs, urban districts, and towns have more limited duties, and, in regard to functions outside their scope, they form part of the administrative counties in which they are situated. The local government system is supervised by the national Department of the Environment.

Irish law is based on common law as modified by subsequent legislation and by the constitution. Judges are appointed by the president and normally serve for life or until retirement. They may be removed from office only in the case of incapacity or “stated misbehaviour” and then only by resolution of both houses of the Oireachtas.

There are district courts and circuit courts, as well as a High Court and a Supreme Court that acts as the court of final appeal. The Supreme Court consists of the chief justice and seven other judges. The circuit courts have jurisdiction to try all serious offenses except murder, treason, and piracy. Criminal trials, which take place before a jury, can be held in a circuit court or in the central criminal court (a division of the High Court). A special criminal court was established in 1972 with jurisdiction over cases of terrorism.

All citizens 18 years of age or older are eligible to vote. Members of both the Seanad and Dáil are chosen at least once every five years. The members of the Dáil are elected in three- to five-member constituencies by single transferable vote, a form of proportional representation. Of the 60 members of the Seanad, 11 are appointed by the prime minister, 6 are elected by the Irish universities, and 43 are elected to represent various economic, vocational, and cultural interests. Women have made significant political gains. Although during the 1990s women won only about one-eighth of the seats in the Dáil and comprised about one-fifth of the Seanad, the country twice elected women presidents, Mary Robinson (Robinson, Mary) in 1990 and Mary McAleese (McAleese, Mary) in 1997.

The major political parties are Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party, and the Progressive Democrats. Fianna Fáil, a republican party, was founded by Eamon de Valera (de Valera, Eamon), who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The party boycotted the Dáil until 1927 but won the general election of 1932, when de Valera became prime minister, a position he held, with two intermissions, until 1959, when he was elected president. Fine Gael is the party of the Irish nationalists Arthur Griffith (Griffith, Arthur), Michael Collins (Collins, Michael), and William Thomas Cosgrave (Cosgrave, William Thomas), who supported the treaty of 1921 and founded the Irish Free State. Cumann na nGaedheal, forerunner of Fine Gael, held power from 1922 to 1932. After World War II, government leadership tended to shift between Fine Gael–Labour Party coalitions and Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil formed several independent (i.e., noncoalition) governments until the late 1980s, when it entered into an alliance with the Progressive Democrats. Later governing coalitions were led by both parties. During the 1990s all major parties accepted the position within the United Kingdom of Northern Ireland. The Irish constitution was altered to acknowledge this fact in 1998, when voters overwhelmingly endorsed the Belfast Agreement, a peace plan signed by the Irish and British governments and nationalist (Roman Catholic) and unionist (Protestant) political parties in Northern Ireland.

Ireland has no local police forces. The Guardians of the Peace (An Garda Síochána), established in 1922, is a nationwide force headed by a commissioner who is responsible to the minister for justice. A few hundred members of the force are assigned to detective duties; they are usually plainclothes officers and, when necessary, are armed. The rest of the force is uniformed and does not carry firearms.

Ireland's defense forces, which include both active-duty and reserve components, are made up largely of army personnel, although the country also maintains small naval and air forces. Under the constitution, the president is the supreme commander of the armed forces; however, the prime minister effectively oversees the military through the minister for defense and a defense council. Irish forces, including the air corps and the naval service, have played an active part in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. In the late 20th century Irish officers or forces served in UN missions to such places as Lebanon and other areas of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Congo (Kinshasa), Cyprus, and the Balkans. There is no conscription; enlistment in the defense forces and the reserve force is voluntary.

Health services are administered by eight regional health boards under the general supervision of the Department of Health and Children. Health examinations, child welfare clinics, and the treatment of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases are available to all without charge. Otherwise, the cost of public health services depends on the patient's means. Persons who cannot afford to pay are entitled to a comprehensive health service free of charge. A middle-income group—insured workers, smaller farmers, and others of restricted means—is entitled to a free maternity and child welfare service and to free hospital and specialist services. Those who are more affluent normally arrange and pay for their own medical advice and hospital services, but a voluntary health insurance program was established by law in 1957. Owing in large measure to the world-famous Irish Hospitals' Sweepstakes (Irish Sweepstakes) (1930–87), a large lottery that was promoted internationally, the republic developed an excellent system of hospitals.

Pay-related social insurance is paid by most employees age 16 and over. Benefits include widows' and orphans' pensions, unemployment and disability benefits, deserted wives' allowances, and old-age pensions. The indigent receive certain benefits on a noncontributory basis. These include widows' and orphans' pensions, old-age pensions, home assistance, unemployment assistance, and pensions for those disabled or blind. Children's allowances are paid to all households for each child under age 16, irrespective of means.

Ireland is a signatory to international agreements on human rights, and capital punishment has been outlawed. Because of the influence of the Roman Catholic church, Ireland historically has had strict social laws (e.g., abortion is illegal). However, referenda in the 1980s and '90s resulted in some reforms, including the legalization of divorce and contraception.

The cultural milieu of Ireland has been shaped by the dynamic interplay between the ancient Celtic traditions of the people and those imposed on them from outside, notably from Britain. This has produced a culture of rich, distinctive character in which the use of language—be it Irish (Irish language) or English (English language)—has always been the central element. Not surprisingly, Irish culture is best known through its literature, drama, and songs; above all, the Irish are renowned as masters of the art of conversation.

Use of the Irish language declined steadily during the 19th century and was nearly wiped out by the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and subsequent emigration, which particularly affected the Irish-speaking population in the western portion of the country—the area “beyond the pale” (i.e., beyond the English-speaking and controlled area around Dublin). From the mid-19th century, in the years following the famine, there was a resurgence in Irish language and traditional culture. This Gaelic revival led, in turn, to the Irish literary renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in which native expression was explored and renewed by a generation of writers and academics. It also produced a resurgence in traditional musical and dance forms. The cultural revivalism became an inspiration to the Irish nationalist struggle of the early decades of the 20th century. Partly because of government subsidies and programs, traditional cultural activities, especially the use of the Irish language and the revival of arts and crafts, have increased.

Ireland has several distinct regional cultures, rather than a single national one; moreover, the daily lives of city dwellers are in some ways much different from those living in the countryside. For example, whereas Dublin is one of Europe's most cosmopolitan cities, the Blasket Islands of Dingle Bay seem almost a throwback to earlier centuries. Wherever they live, the Irish maintain a vibrant and lively folk culture. Thousands participate in the country's numerous amateur musical, dance, and storytelling events. A great many also engage in a variety of craft-based industries, producing items such as glass, ceramics, ironwork, wood-turning, linens, embroidery, and knitwear, served by the Crafts Council of Ireland (based in Kilkenny) and an annual trade fair in Dublin. Irish fashion has advanced beyond the still-popular Aran sweater, with various designers establishing fashion trends that have broad appeal both nationally and internationally.

The Irish pub serves as a focal point for many small villages and urban neighbourhoods, a place where the great Irish passion for conversation, stories, and jokes can be indulged. Traditional Irish music—using locally made instruments such as the fiddle, the tin whistle, and the uilleann pipes (Irish bagpipes)—is performed at many pubs, and traditional songs are often sung there in the Gaelic language, at times accompanied by the Celtic harp (an emblem of Ireland). The céilí, a traditional musical gathering, is an enduring expression of Irish social life that has counterparts in other Celtic cultures. Such gatherings, as well as hiring fairs, cattle shows, and other festivals, usually feature locally produced ales and whiskeys and traditional foods such as soda bread, corned beef, and colcannon (a stew of potatoes and cabbage).

The Wexford Opera Festival, held annually in the fall, draws a large international audience. Of particular importance is St. Patrick's Day (March 17), honouring the country's patron saint. Whereas overseas the holiday has become a boisterous, largely secular celebration of all things Irish, in Ireland it is a religious occasion often observed by saying prayers for peace, especially in neighbouring Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, some of the practices celebrated abroad have been adopted locally in the interest of tourism.

The earliest known literature in the Old Irish language takes several forms. Many manuscripts, such as the Milan and Turin glosses on the Bible (so named for the libraries where they are housed), are religious in nature; others are secular and include lyric poems, fragments of epic verse, and riddles. Little of this literature is read today except by scholars of the Irish language and of comparative historical linguistics. Instead, the stream of Irish literature that has enriched world culture has been almost entirely written in English. The sheer volume of work attributed to Irish writers is remarkable considering the country's small size and, until recently, its only partially literate populace.

A flowering of Irish literary works especially occurred with the standardization of Irish in the mid-20th century. After World War II a new wave of poets, novelists, and dramatists produced a significant literature in modern Irish, among them Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Máirtín Ó Direáin, and Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Beginning in the 1970s, another generation of writers made important contributions in Irish, notably Mícheál Ó Siadhail, Gabriel Rosenstock, Michael Hartnett, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Áine Ní Ghlinn, and Cathal Ó Searcaigh.

Dublin is the centre of Ireland's theatrical life. Its Abbey Theatre, founded in 1904 and rebuilt in the mid-1960s, stages classic Irish plays, as well as new works in both Irish and English. The Gate Theatre produces Irish and international drama, while the Peacock Theatre, located under the foyer of the Abbey Theatre, concentrates on experimental plays and on works in Irish. Theatres and theatre companies such as Galway's Druid Theatre are found throughout the country, however, promoting a wide range of national and international drama. In addition, there is a vigorous amateur dramatic movement active throughout the country.

Irish traditional musical forms date from preliterate times. The Irish harp long had been the only instrument played, but many other instruments—such as the uilleann pipes, fiddle, and accordion—were added later. The Royal Irish Academy of Music is a major institution for music training, and folkloric and musical conservation groups such as Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (Fellowship of Irish Musicians) have established workshops and libraries throughout the country and around the world. The revival of traditional music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was followed by an even more energetic resurgence beginning in the 1960s. Irish songs gained wide appeal in Europe in the 19th century, and the music brought to the United States by Irish immigrants became one of the principal sources of traditional American music. Irish traditional musicians such as the Clancy Brothers, Planxty, the Boys of the Lough, Clannad, and the Chieftains have toured much of the world. More urban and working-class-based music and song have been represented by groups such as the Dubliners and the Wolfe Tones. Interest in Irish traditional music was greatly boosted by a vogue for Irish pubs that spread across the world. More recently, elements of traditional Irish music have been appropriated by rock musicians to create a distinctive Irish popular music form with great international appeal. For example, beginning in the 1980s, the postpunk group U2 received international acclaim, and its lead singer, Bono, gained fame for his outspokenness on domestic and global political issues. Other popular music groups and artists have included Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher, the Corrs, the Cranberries, Bob Geldof, Sinéad O'Connor, and Hothouse Flowers. Similarly influenced by traditional Irish music, the ethereal-voiced New Age singer Enya (Eithne Ní Bhraonáin) gained a huge international following beginning in the late 1980s. Opera is less popular in Ireland, although singers such as Bernadette Greevy and Suzanne Murphy have gained widespread recognition.

Ireland is famous for its tenor singers of Irish traditional tunes. The prototypical Irish tenor was John McCormack (McCormack, John), noted for his brilliant tone and resonant timbre. Although the fashion faded from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s, it regained its vitality and popularity in the work of Frank Patterson and American-born Robert White.

Best-known of the Irish classical composers are John Field (Field, John), whose work influenced that of Frédéric Chopin (Chopin, Frédéric), and Michael Balfe (Balfe, Michael William). Based in Dublin and maintained by Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ; the state-owned broadcasting company), the National Symphony Orchestra and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra are the country's principal orchestral groups. Ireland's leading contemporary music ensemble, Concorde, commissions and performs the work of contemporary composers. New music is supported by the Contemporary Music Centre in Dublin, a national archive and resource centre. Many arts organizations and individual artists are supported in part by the Arts Council of Ireland, a developmental government agency.

Ireland has a long tradition of folk dancing (folk dance). Solo dancing is characterized by its lightning footwork and high kicks, all executed while the upper body is kept rigidly straight; jigs and reels have always been popular. The interest in Irish dancing, which grew apace with the revival of traditional music, led in the 1990s to the creation of the performance work Riverdance, which achieved international acclaim and sparked the founding of dance companies around the world that explored this style.

At the turn of the 20th century, Irish art remained relatively isolated from the contemporary trends that spread throughout Europe. Painter John Butler Yeats (father of poet William Butler Yeats) received widespread praise for his portraiture, as did Sir William Orpen (Orpen, Sir William), who influenced a generation of Irish artists as a teacher. Paul Henry's depictions of the Irish countryside were also popular. Jack Butler Yeats (Yeats, Jack Butler), the poet's brother, using traditional Irish subjects and elements of Celtic mythology, became recognized as the major Irish artist of the mid-20th century.

It was only after World War II that avant-garde developments, popular in the rest of Europe for decades, fully touched Irish art. In this climate, Louis Le Brocquy gained fame for his abstract portraits. Perhaps the most prominent Irish-born artist of the postwar period was Francis Bacon (Bacon, Francis), who became known for his brutal figurative paintings. Although he spent most of his life in Britain, his studio has been reconstructed in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. Throughout the postwar period, alternative exhibiting spaces and organizations increasingly made it possible for more experimental styles and artists to be noticed in Ireland.

By the late 20th century, Irish art reflected a wide range of styles and media. As in literature, many contemporary visual artists (e.g., Brian Maguire, Dorothy Cross, Kathy Pendergast, and Brian Bourke) gained international reputations, with their work included in major international shows such as the Venice Biennale. Many late-century Irish artists settled in the thriving art scene in London, yet their work often remained infused with the social and political issues of their homeland.

Annual art exhibitions, the most important of which is the Royal Hibernian Academy, are a regular feature of modern Irish cultural life, and many corporate collections of contemporary Irish art are of the highest calibre. Printmaking has flourished since the establishment of the Graphic Studio and Graphic Studio Gallery by Mary Farl Powers, followed by the Black Church Print Studio (both now located in Dublin) and other studios in urban areas.

Film is also an important medium for Irish visual artists and writers. During the late 20th century, several Irish films received international acclaim, including The Crying Game (1992), which won an Academy Award for best screenplay, My Left Foot (1989), and In the Name of the Father (1993). International films such as The Quiet Man (1952), Ryan's Daughter (1970), The Dead (1987), The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), and Angela's Ashes (1999) have also focused on Irish themes and history.

The endeavours of the Irish Georgian Society and of An Taisce (the National Trust) have helped to protect the architectural heritage of the country. Dublin's many 18th-century buildings are among the finest-preserved in all of Europe.

Most of the country's major museums, libraries, and learned societies are located in Dublin, including the National Museum of Ireland, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the National Library of Ireland. Under British rule a number of Anglo-Irish cultural institutions were established there and successfully adapted to accommodate stronger nationalist sentiment during the 20th century. These include the Royal Irish Academy (1785) and the Royal Dublin Society (1731). Also important are the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts (1823) and the Royal Irish Academy of Music (1856). The quasi-governmental Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon; 1951) distributes annual state grants to assist the arts and artists. Individual writers, artists, and composers also are aided by tax concessions and by additional financial support from the Aosdána organization. The establishment of a national lottery in 1986 substantially increased funding for the arts and for sports.

Many institutions are specifically concerned with the popularization and preservation of aspects of traditional national culture. Notably, the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge; 1893) promotes the use of the Irish language. Other bodies concentrate on the organization of folk music festivals (feiseanna), at which there are competitions in traditional storytelling and dancing as well as in instrumental music and singing.

The Irish are avid sports fans, especially of their native games of Gaelic football—a cross between football (soccer) and rugby—and hurling, which resembles a rough-and-tumble version of field hockey. Both are promoted by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; Cumann Lúthchleas), founded in 1884 to revive native Irish sports. Today there are several hundred thousand members of the GAA who play these games as amateurs, and the professional teams compete in the All-Ireland matches that draw huge crowds to Dublin's Croke Park. Handball is also a traditional Irish sport.

Football and rugby are widely popular, often played in sold-out stadiums in Dublin. In 1990 the national football team reached the quarterfinals in the World Cup, and Irish players are prominent on the rosters of professional teams throughout the world. The Irish are extremely passionate about horse racing, and the Irish Derby draws Europe's best competitors to The Curragh (Curragh, The), the flat racetrack in County Kildare. Greyhound racing at Shelbourne Park in Dublin is also well attended. In bicycling, Dubliner Steven Roche won the Tour de France and the World Championship in 1987.

The Olympic Council of Ireland was formed in 1922, and Ireland's official participation in the Olympic Games began in Paris in 1924. (Irish athletes had competed for Great Britain in previous games, since 1896.) Since then Ireland has missed only the 1936 games. The first medal by an Irishman came in 1896, when John Boland won a gold medal in tennis for Great Britain. The first medal for the Irish team came in 1928 in Amsterdam, where Patrick O'Callaghan won a gold in the hammer throw. In 1996 Michelle Smith became the first Irish female athlete to win a gold medal, capturing three gold medals in swimming. Four years later distance runner Sonia O'Sullivan won a silver medal in the 5,000-metre event at the 2000 Olympic Games.

Several daily newspapers are published in Ireland, including some that have a national circulation. Leading dailies include the Irish Independent and The Irish Times of Dublin and the Irish Examiner of Cork. There also are a large number of regional weekly papers. Dublin is the centre of the publishing industry, and nearly all of the republic's periodicals are based there.

RTÉ, the national state-owned radio and television broadcaster, began radio service in 1926 and television service in 1961. A second RTÉ national television channel, Network 2, was launched in 1978. RTÉ is financed by revenue from license fees and advertising and is governed by the government-appointed RTÉ Authority. There is an extensive independent radio network with many privately owned stations; an independent Irish-language television station, Teilifís na Gaeilge (TG4), was established in 1996. RTÉ's monopoly is a technical rather than a practical matter, since most of the population receives broadcasts from the United Kingdom and other European countries and can subscribe to cable and satellite services. In 1998 a privately owned commercial television channel, TV3, commenced operations. Non-RTÉ broadcasting is regulated by the government-appointed Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, which is also charged with licensing new television services, developing programming rules and codes, and establishing advertising standards.

Ireland, lying to the west of Britain, has always been to some extent cut off by it from direct contact with other European countries, especially those from Sweden to the Rhine River. Readier access has been through France, Spain, and Portugal and even Norway and Iceland. Internally, the four ecclesiastical provinces into which Ireland was divided in the 12th century realistically denoted the main natural divisions of the country. Of these, the north had in the earliest times been culturally connected with Scotland, the east with Roman Britain and Wales, the south with Wales and France, and the southwest and west with France and Spain. In later times, despite political changes, these associations continued in greater or lesser degree.

The position of Ireland, geographically peripheral to western Europe, became “central” and thus potentially more important once Europe's horizons expanded in the 15th and 16th centuries to include the New World. Paradoxically it was in the earlier period that Ireland won particular fame as a notable and respected centre of Christianity, scholarship, and the arts. After the Middle Ages, subjugation to Britain stultified—or the struggle for freedom absorbed—much of Ireland's native energy. But its influence was always exercised as much through its emigrants as in its achievements as a nation. During the centuries of British occupation the successors of the great missionaries and scholars who had fostered Christianity and learning among the Germanic peoples of the European continent from the 7th to 9th century were those who formed a considerable element in the armies and clergy of Roman Catholic countries and had an incalculable influence on the later development of the United States. Throughout history innumerable people of Anglo-Irish origin or nurture have had a constant and profound influence, as statesmen or soldiers, on the history of both Ireland and Britain.

The human occupation of Ireland did not begin until a late stage in the prehistory of Europe. It generally was held that the first arrivals to Ireland were Mesolithic hunter-fisher people, represented largely by flintwork found mainly in ancient beaches in the historic counties of Antrim, Down, Louth, and Dublin. These artifacts were named Larnian, after Larne, Northern Ireland, the site where they were first found; dates from 6000 BC onward were assigned to them. Archaeological work since World War II, however, casts considerable doubt on the antiquity and affinities of the people who were responsible for the Larnian industry; association with Neolithic remains suggests that they should be considered not as a Mesolithic (Mesolithic Period) people but rather as groups contemporary with the Neolithic farmers. The Larnian could then be interpreted as a specialized aspect of contemporary Neolithic culture. Lake and riverside finds, especially along the River Bann, show a comparable tradition. A single carbon-14 date of 5725 ± 110 BC from Toome Bay, north of Lough Neagh (Neagh, Lough), for woodworking and flint has been cited in support of a Mesolithic phase in Ireland, but such a single date cannot be considered reliable.

In Ireland a second type of megalithic long barrow—the so-called portal tomb, of which there are more than 150 examples—developed from the court tomb. They spread across the court tomb area in the northern half of Ireland and extend into Leinster and Waterford and also to western Wales and Cornwall.

Another notable feature of the Irish Neolithic is the passage tomb. This megalithic tomb, unlike the long-barrow types, is set in a round mound, sited usually on a hilltop and grouped in cemeteries. The rich grave goods of these tombs include beads, pendants, and bone pins. Many of the stones of the tombs are elaborately decorated with engraved designs. The main axis of the distribution lies along a series of great cemeteries from the River Boyne (Boyne, River) to Sligo (Boyne and Loughcrew in County Meath, Carrowkeel and Carrowmore in County Sligo). Smaller groups and single tombs occur largely in the northern half of the country and in Leinster. A specialized group of later—indeed, advanced Bronze Age—date near Tramore, County Waterford, is quite similar to a large group on the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall. The great Irish passage tombs include some of the most magnificent megalithic tombs in all of Europe—for example, Newgrange and Knowth in Meath. While the passage tombs represent the arrival of the megalithic tradition in its fullest and most sophisticated form, the exact relation between the builders of these tombs and the more or less contemporary long-barrow builders is not clear. The passage tombs suggest rather more clearly integrated communities than do the long barrows.

To the final stage of the Neolithic probably belong the rich house sites of both rectangular and circular form at Lough Gur, County Limerick. The pottery shows a strong connection with the tradition of the long barrow (court tomb and portal tomb).

Two great incursions establish the early Bronze Age in Ireland. One, represented by approximately 400 megalithic tombs of the wedge tomb variety, is associated with Beaker (Beaker folk) pottery. This group is dominant in the western half of the country. Similar tombs also associated with Beaker finds are common in the French region of Brittany, and the origin of the Irish series is clearly from this region. In Ireland the distribution indicates that these tomb builders sought well-drained grazing land, such as the Burren limestones in Clare, and also copper deposits, such as those on the Cork-Kerry coast and around the Silvermines area of Tipperary.

In contrast, in the eastern half of the country a people in the single-burial tradition dominate. Their burial modes and distinctive pottery, known as food vessels, have strong roots in the Beaker tradition that dominates in many areas of western Europe. They may have reached Ireland via Britain from the lowland areas around the Rhine or farther north.

Throughout the early Bronze Age Ireland had a flourishing metal industry, and bronze, copper, and gold objects were exported widely to Britain and the Continent. In the middle Bronze Age (about 1500 BC) new influences brought urn burial into eastern Ireland. From about 1200 BC elements of a late Bronze Age appear, and by about 800 BC a great late Bronze Age industry was established. A considerable wealth of bronze and gold is present, an example of which is the great Clare gold hoard. Nordic connections have been noted in much of this metalwork.

The period of the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in Ireland is fraught with uncertainties. The problem of identifying archaeological remains with language grouping is notoriously difficult, but it seems likely that the principal Celtic arrivals occurred in the Iron Age. Irish sagas, which probably reflect the pagan Irish Iron Age, reveal conditions in many respects similar to the descriptions of the ancient Classical authors, such as Poseidonius and Julius Caesar. The Celts (Celt) were an Indo-European group who are thought to have originated in the 2nd millennium BC, probably in east-central Europe. They were among the earliest to develop an Iron Age culture, as has been found at Hallstatt, Austria (c. 700 BC). Although there is little sign of Hallstatt-like culture in Ireland, the later La Tène culture (which may date in Ireland from 300 BC or earlier) is represented in metalwork and some stone sculpture, mainly in the northern half of the country. Connections with northern England are apparent. Hill fort building seems also characteristic of the Iron Age.

Politically, Ireland was organized into a number of petty kingdoms, or clans (tuatha), each of which was quite independent under its elected king. Groups of tuatha tended to combine, but the king who claimed overlordship in each group had a primacy of honour rather than of jurisdiction. Not until the 10th century AD was there a king of all Ireland (árd rí Éireann). A division of the country into five groups of tuatha, known as the Five Fifths (Cuíg Cuígí), occurred about the beginning of the Christian era. These were Ulster (Ulaidh), Meath (Midhe), Leinster (Laighin), Munster (Mumhain), and Connaught (Connacht).

Surrounding a king was an aristocracy (airi aicme, the upper class), whose land and property rights were clearly defined by law and whose main wealth was in cattle. Greater landowners were supported by céilí, or clients. These and other grades of society, minutely classified and described by legal writers, tilled the soil and tended the cattle. Individual families (family) were the real units of society and collectively exercised powers of ownership over their farms and territory. At law the family (fine) did not merely act corporately but was, by one of the oldest customs, held responsible for the observance of the law by its kindred, serfs, and slaves.

There were no urban centres, and the economic basis of society was cattle rearing and agriculture. The principal crops were wheat, barley, oats, flax, and hay. The land was tilled with plows drawn by oxen. Sheep appear to have been bred principally for their wool, and the only animal reared specifically for slaughter was the pig. Fishing, hunting, fowling, and trapping provided additional food. The transport of goods over land was by packhorse, for wheeled vehicles appear to have been few. Sea transport was by curragh, a wicker-framed boat covered with hides; the normal freshwater craft was the dugout.

The dwellings of the period were built by the post-and-wattle technique, and some were situated within the protected sites archaeologists call ring forts. Excavations have shown that some of these may have existed even in the Bronze Age and that they remained a normal place of habitation until medieval times. Advantage was also taken of the relative security of islands in rivers or lakes as dwelling places; and artificial islands, called crannogs, were also extensively made.

The Irish laws point to a large development of rural industry in the period in which they were first written down, shortly before the Norse invasions beginning at the end of the 8th century. They deal minutely not only with the management of land and animal rearing but also with innumerable further details of husbandry, including milling, dyeing, dairying, malting, meat curing, and spinning and weaving. Wool was spun with a wooden spindle weighted with a whorl of bone or stone, and it was woven on a loom. The outer garment (dress) worn by both men and women was a large woolen cloak (brat), fastened on the shoulder or breast with a pin or brooch. The inner garment was a long linen tunic (léine), girded at the waist with a belt. Shoes of rawhide or tanned leather were worn, at least by the upper classes and the higher professional ranks. A large amount of metalwork reveals the adaptation by Irish craftsmen of many techniques originating in Britain or on the European continent. An instinct for design, added to the skillful use of these techniques, enabled them to produce many superb objects, of which the Tara brooch, dating from about the mid-8th century, is an outstanding example. The chief musical instrument of the period was the harp.

The documentary history of Ireland begins only in the 7th century, which saw the production in both Latin and Irish of sufficiently rich and numerous records of all sorts. For events before that time, historians rely on literary sources such as the sagas, many of whose characters may represent only poetic imagination and in which the social or political circumstances portrayed reflect the fantasies of their authors rather than historical reality. Nevertheless, the traditions seem to indicate, during the early centuries AD, a process of political cohesion in Ireland through which the tuatha ultimately became grouped into the Five Fifths. Among these, Ulster seems at first to have been dominant; but, by the time Niall of the Nine Hostages died early in the 5th century, hegemony had passed to his midland kingdom of Meath, which was then temporarily associated with Connaught. In the 6th century, descendants of Niall, ruling at Tara in northern Leinster, were claiming to be overkings of three provinces, Ulster, Connaught, and Meath. Later they claimed to be kings of all of Ireland, although their power rarely extended over Munster or the greater part of Leinster. Two branches of Niall's descendants, the Cenél nEogain, of the northern Uí Néill, and the Clan Cholmáin, of the southern Uí Néill, alternated as kings of Ireland from 734 to 1002, a fact that suggests a formal arrangement between the two septs (i.e., descendants of a common ancestor). Inevitably, claims to a high kingship came to be contested by the rulers of Munster, who, from their capital at Cashel, had gradually increased their strength, depriving Connaught of the region that later became County Clare. But not until the reign of Brian Boru in the 11th century was Munster sufficiently strong to secure a real high kingship over all of Ireland.

Latin writings from about the mid-3rd century make frequent reference to raiding expeditions carried out by the Irish, who were now given the new name Scoti rather than the older one Hiberni. In the second half of the 4th century, when Roman power in Britain was beginning to crumble seriously, the raids became incessant, and settlements were made along the west coast of Britain and extensively in Wales and Scotland. From the early 5th century the rulers of Dalriada in northern Antrim extended their power over the Irish already settled in Argyll and the neighbouring islands. Ultimately the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada became separated from the Irish; in the 9th century, when it overcame the Picts, it gave its name, Scotland, to the whole area.

Little is known of the first impact of Christianity on Ireland. Traditions in the south and southeast refer to early saints who allegedly preceded St. Patrick (Patrick, Saint), and their missions may well have come through trading relations with the Roman Empire. The earliest firm date is AD 431, when St. Germanus (Germanus of Auxerre, Saint), bishop of Auxerre in Gaul, proposed, with the approval of Pope Celestine I (Celestine I, Saint), to send a certain Palladius to “the Scots believing in Christ.” Subsequent missionary history in Ireland is dominated by the figure of St. Patrick (Patrick, Saint), whose 7th-century biographers, Tirechán and Muirchú, credited him with converting all the Irish to Christianity and won for him the status of national apostle.

A 9th-century record, the Book of Armagh, includes a work by Patrick himself, the Confessio (“Confession,” a reply to charges made by British ecclesiastics), in which he describes his life at a Roman villa in Britain, his capture by Irish raiders, and his seven years of slavery in Ireland. Recovering his freedom, he claimed he was educated and ordained into the priesthood and eventually managed to be sent as a missionary to Ireland. He concentrated on the north and west of the country, achieving remarkable success; he did not himself claim to have converted all of Ireland. Confusion exists regarding the chronology of Patrick's life, and it is seriously contended that tradition came to merge the experience of two men, the continental Palladius and the Patrick of the Confessio. No sufficient evidence supports the traditional date (432) for the beginning of Patrick's mission; of the rival dates (461/462 and 492/493) given for his death in annals and biographies, the latter is now preferred.

Although monks and monasteries were to be found in Ireland at the time of Patrick, their place was then altogether secondary. But in the course of the 6th and 7th centuries a comprehensive monastic system developed in Ireland, partly through the influence of Celtic (Celtic Church) monasteries in Britain, such as Candida Casa at Whithorn in Galloway and Llangarvan in Wales. Early attempts to organize the Irish church on the usual Roman system—by which each bishop and his clergy exercised exclusive jurisdiction within a diocese—seem to have given way to one in which groups of Christian settlements were loosely linked together, usually under the auspices of some one or other of the great saints. Careful study of the lives of the early saints reveals the manner in which their reputations developed in proportion to the power of the political dynasties that became connected with them.

By the end of the 6th century, enthusiasm for Christianity was leading Irishmen to devote themselves to a most austere existence as monks, as hermits, and as missionaries to pagan tribes in Scotland and the north of England and in a great area of west-central Europe, particularly between the Rhine, Loire, and Rhône rivers. St. Columba (Columba, Saint)'s foundation (c. 563) of the monastery of Iona off the northwest Scottish coast provided the best-known base for the Celtic Christianization of Scotland; and its offshoot, Lindisfarne (Holy Island) ( Holy Island), lying off the coast of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, was responsible for the conversion of that area. Of the continental missionaries, the best-known is St. Columban (Columban, Saint) (c. 543–615), whose monastic foundations at Luxeuil near Annegray in the Vosges and at Bobbio in northern Italy became important centres of learning. Columban, however, by his individualism and austere puritanism, came into conflict not only with the Merovingian rulers of Gaul but also with the local ecclesiastical administration; his limitations exemplify those of the Irish monastic system as a whole and explain why, in the end, it was supplanted by the ordinary administrative system of the church.

Both at home and abroad the saints were succeeded by scholars, whose work in sacred and classical studies and particularly in elaborating an Irish (Irish literature) Christian (Christianity) mythology and literature was to have profound effects on the Irish language and was to be a major factor in its survival. The Irish monasteries—with those in Clonmacnoise and Clonard among the most famous—became notable centres of learning. Christianity brought Latin to Ireland, and the writings of both the Church Fathers and Classical authors were read and studied. Irish scribes produced manuscripts (calligraphy) written in the clear hand known as Insular (Insular script); this usage spread from Ireland to Anglo-Saxon England and to Irish monasteries on the European continent. Initial letters in the manuscripts were illuminated (illuminated manuscript), usually with intricate ribbon and zoomorphic designs. The most famous of the Irish manuscripts is the Book of Kells (Kells, Book of), a copy of the four Gospels probably dating from the late 8th to the early 9th century. The earliest surviving illuminated manuscript, the Book of Durrow, was probably made about a century earlier.

The adoption of Christianity made it necessary to relate the chronology of Irish tradition, history, and genealogies to the events recorded in the Bible. The Book of Invasions (Leabhar Gabhála), in which Irish history was linked with events in the Old Testament, was a notable example of this process. In this way Latin civilization in Ireland became linked to the Gaelic, and the association became closer under the impact of the Viking wars. Gradually the Latin products of the Christian schools became replaced by Irish works; for example, Latin lives of the saints are almost always earlier in date than those written in Irish. Recurring bouts of puritanism and reforming movements in the church tended to remove secular literature from monastic control; ultimately there developed a class of professional families who were its custodians from the 12th to the 17th century. The medieval secular writers, employing a degenerate form of Old Irish usually known as Middle Irish, were responsible for a large proportion of Irish literary achievement; their historical works, the annals, and the great genealogies, supplemented by the law collections, have enabled historians to reconstruct early Irish social history.

The first appearance of the Norsemen (Viking) on the Irish coast is recorded in 795. Thereafter the Norsemen made frequent plundering raids, sometimes far inland. In 838 they seized and fortified two ports, Annagassan and Dublin, and in the 840s they undertook a series of large-scale invasions in the north of the country. These invaders were driven out by Aed Finnliath, high king from 862 to 879, but meanwhile the Norse rulers of Dublin were reaching the zenith of their power. They took Waterford in 914 and Limerick in 920. Gradually, without quite abandoning piracy, the Vikings became traders in close association with the Irish, and their commercial towns became a new element in the life of the country. The decline of Norse power in the south began when they lost Limerick in 968 and was finally effected when the Scandinavian allies of the king of Dublin were defeated by High King Brian Boru at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.

Although the Battle of Clontarf removed the prospect of Norse domination, it brought a period of political unsettlement. High kings ruled in Ireland but almost always “with opposition,” meaning they were not acknowledged by a minority of provincial kings. The Viking invasions had, in fact, shown the strength and the weakness of the Irish position. The fact that power had been preserved at a local level in Ireland enabled a maximum of resistance to be made; and, although the invaders established maritime strongholds, they never achieved any domination comparable to their control of eastern England or northwestern France. After Clontarf they remained largely in control of Ireland's commerce but came increasingly under the influence of neighbouring Irish kings.

In the 11th and 12th centuries the ecclesiastical reform movement of western Europe was extended into Ireland. As the kings of Munster and Connaught, along with those of Leinster and Ulster, each struggled to secure the dominant position that had once been held by Brian Boru, they came to realize the value to them of alliance with the forces of church reform. Thus, with the aid of provincial rulers, the reformers established in Ireland a system of dioceses whose boundaries were coterminous with those of the chief petty kingdoms. At the head of this hierarchy was established the archbishopric of Armagh, in association with the province of Ulster dominated by the royal family of Uí Néill. But the victory of the reformers was not complete, for the parochial system was not introduced until after the Anglo-Norman invasion. Moreover, the reformers sought to influence Irish conduct as well as church organization. The enormities of Irish moral behaviour were colourfully described by St. Bernard (Bernard de Clairvaux, Saint) of Clairvaux in his life of his contemporary St. Malachy (Malachy, Saint), the reforming bishop who introduced the Cistercian monks into Ireland. The reforming popes Adrian IV and Alexander III encouraged Henry II's invasion of Ireland, believing that it would further church reform in that country. In a remarkable account of the conquest, Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis)) provided a lurid description of the archaic Irish civilization that the invaders encountered. The recognition of Henry II as lord of Ireland and the linking of the church to a foreign administration terminated the independence of Gaelic Ireland and reduced the country to a position of subordination for centuries to come.

King John, who visited Ireland in 1210, established there a civil government independent of the feudal lords, and during the 13th century it became more fully organized. An Irish exchequer had been set up in 1200, and a chancery followed in 1232. The country was divided into counties for administrative purposes, English law was introduced, and serious attempts were made to reduce the feudal liberties of the Anglo-Norman baronage. (Counties were civil administration districts, whereas liberties were lands held in the personal control of aristocratic families and the church.) The development of the Irish Parliament paralleled that of its English counterpart; in 1297 the peers and prelates were joined by representatives of counties, and in 1300 the towns also sent members. But these represented the Anglo-Irish only, as the native Irish—to some extent resurgent in Ulster under the O'Neills and O'Donnells and in southwest Munster under the MacCarthys—went unrepresented.

A brief threat to English control of Ireland, made by Edward Bruce, brother of King Robert I of Scotland, ended when Bruce was killed in battle at Faughart near Dundalk (1318). English control was reasserted and strengthened by the creation of three new Anglo-Irish earldoms: Kildare, given to the head of the Leinster Fitzgeralds; Desmond, given to the head of the Munster Fitzgeralds; and Ormonde, given to the head of the Butlers, who held lands around Tipperary. The increased power and lands of the Anglo-Irish brought about an inevitable reaction, and during the remainder of the 14th century there was a remarkable revival of Irish political power, which was matched by a flowering of Irish language, law, and civilization. The Gaels recovered large parts of Ulster, the midlands, Connaught, and Leinster, while the Anglo-Irish became increasingly Irish, marrying Irish women and often adopting Gaelic customs.

The English government, which was always to some extent opposed by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy because of its aim to curtail feudal privileges, made an effort to restore control but achieved little more than a definition of the status quo. Edward III's son, Lionel, duke of Clarence (Clarence, Lionel of Antwerp, duke of), as viceroy from 1361 to 1367 passed in the Irish Parliament the Statute of Kilkenny (1366), which listed the “obedient” (English-controlled) lands as Louth, Meath, Trim, Dublin, Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, and Tipperary. Intermarriage or alliances with the Irish were forbidden. The independent Irish outside the pale (the area of English control) were regarded as enemies and were assumed to possess their lands only by usurpation. In practice they were feared, and their attacks were often bought off by regular payments. Visits by King Richard II in 1394–95 and 1399 achieved nothing. During the first half of the 15th century, Ireland was, in effect, ruled by the three great earls—of Desmond, Ormonde, and Kildare—who combined to dominate the Dublin government. Desmond had sway in the counties of Limerick, Cork, Kerry, and Waterford; Ormonde in Tipperary and Kilkenny; and Kildare in Leinster. Although both the Gaels and the Anglo-Irish had supported the Yorkist side in the Wars of the Roses (Roses, Wars of the), the Yorkist king Edward IV found them no less easy to subjugate than had his Lancastrian predecessors. Succeeding in 1468 in bringing about the attainder and execution for treason of Thomas, earl of Desmond, Edward was nevertheless obliged to yield to aristocratic power in Ireland. The earls of Kildare, who thereafter bore the title of lords deputy (for the English princes who were lords lieutenant), were in effect the actual rulers of Ireland until well into the 16th century.

The substitution (1485) of Tudor for Yorkist rule in England had no apparent effect in Ireland, where the ascendancy of the Fitzgerald earls of Kildare, established when Thomas, 7th earl, was created lord deputy in 1471, had passed (1477) to his son Garret Mór (Great Gerald). The formality of royal power was preserved by appointing an absentee lieutenant, for whom Kildare acted as deputy. In practice, Kildare exercised real power through dynastic alliances with the chief Gaelic and Anglo-Irish lords. Opposition to Kildare was negligible even when he gave support (1487) to Lambert Simnel (Simnel, Lambert), a pretender to the English throne. After the advent of a more dangerous pretender, Perkin Warbeck (Warbeck, Perkin), in 1494 it was decided to remove Kildare and rule through an Englishman, Sir Edward Poynings (Poynings, Sir Edward). Poynings subdued Kildare, but he could not reconquer the northern Gaelic Irish. At Drogheda (1494–95) he induced Parliament to pass an act that came to be known as “Poynings's Law,” which subjected the meetings and legislative drafts of the Irish Parliament to the control of the English king and council. But Poynings's administrative expenses were too great, and Henry VII decided in 1496 to restore Kildare.

On Kildare's death (1513) the deputyship passed to his son Garret Óg (Young Gerald), 9th earl of Kildare, who continued, though less impressively, to dominate the country. But James, 10th earl of Desmond, intrigued with the Holy Roman emperor Charles V; and Henry VIII became convinced that Kildare had lost the power to control Ireland in the interests of the English crown. Therefore, when Henry's divorce of Catherine of Aragon in 1533 made the danger of imperial intervention particularly acute, the king dismissed Kildare (1534). Thereafter there were no Irish-born viceroys for more than a century.

Sir Anthony Saint Leger (Saint Leger, Sir Anthony), lord deputy in 1540–48 and again in 1550–56, then began a conciliatory policy by which outstanding lords were persuaded to renounce the pope and recognize the king's ecclesiastical supremacy in order to gain new titles and grants of lands. This policy, however, required a steady series of efficient governors and disciplined administrators; in fact, neither in Tudor nor in Stuart times did the English succeed in converting elective chiefs into hereditary nobles holding offices delegated by the crown. Moreover, even those who had recently submitted were often condemned for religious conservatism and deprived of their lands. Saint Leger's personal success was all the more remarkable because the first Jesuit mission to Ireland arrived in the north in 1542.

Under Edward VI (1547–53) the Dublin authorities carried out a forward policy in religion as well as in politics, but Protestantism got no support except from English officials. The official restoration of Roman Catholicism under Queen Mary (Mary I) (1553–58) revealed the strength of resentment in Ireland against Protestantism. As in England, the papal jurisdiction was restored, but otherwise the Tudor regulations of authority were observed. The pope was induced to recognize the conversion of the Tudor Irish lordship into a kingdom. Finally Mary gave statutory approval for the plantation (or resettlement of Irish lands by Englishmen) of Leix, Offaly, and other Irish lordships of the central plain. Her viceroy was Thomas Radcliffe, earl of Sussex, lord deputy (1556–59), who was soon, as lord lieutenant (1559–66) for Elizabeth I, to restore the state's authority over the church.

The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, which enforced the Anglican church settlement, were passed in Ireland in 1560, but fear of driving the inhabitants of the Pale into alliance with the Gaelic Irish (and perhaps with the Spanish) made the government lenient in enforcing the terms of the acts. Political affairs continued to preoccupy the administrators, so that the new Protestant (Protestantism) church was unequipped to resist the forces of the Counter-Reformation. This was inevitable in an Ireland only superficially conformed to royal obedience, but the seriousness of the situation was shown by the three great rebellions of the reign, those of Shane O'Neill (O'Neill, Shane) (1559), of the Fitzgeralds of Desmond (1568–83), and of O'Neill (Tyrone) and O'Donnell (1594–1603).

The first of these rebellions, that of Shane O'Neill, fully exposed the weakness and later the folly of the government. O'Neill's father, Conn the Lame (Conn Bacach), who as the “O'Neill” was head of a whole network of clans, had been made earl of Tyrone in 1541, and the succession rights of his illegitimate son Feardorchadh (Matthew) were recognized. Shane, younger but the eldest legitimate son, was elected O'Neill on his father's death in 1559, and soon afterward Feardorchadh was killed. O'Neill then battled against the Dublin government, demanding recognition according to the laws of primogeniture, and he insisted that neither of Feardorchadh's sons, Brian and Hugh, had claims to the earldom. Elizabeth invited O'Neill to London to negotiate, but the opportunity for a statesmanlike settlement was lost. O'Neill was to be “captain of Tyrone” and was encouraged to expel from Antrim the MacDonnell (MacDonald or MacConnell) migrants from Scotland. Returning to Ireland in May 1562, O'Neill routed the MacDonnells, as well as the loyal O'Donnells of the northwest, and attempted to secure support from Scotland and France. Eventually the government was saved from a serious situation only through the defeat of O'Neill by the O'Donnells and his murder in 1567 by the MacDonnells.

The lands of the O'Neills and even of loyal Gaelic lords were declared forfeit in 1569, and, in a wave of enthusiasm for colonization, various questionable adventurers were permitted to attempt substantial plantations in Munster, Leinster, and Ulster. The folly of this policy was seen when the government, despite its having declared the position of “O'Neill” extinguished, allowed the O'Neills to elect Shane's cousin Turlough Luineach (Clanconnell, Turlough Luineach O'Neill, Earl of) as their chief. Butlers and Munster Fitzgeralds also combined forcibly to resist the plantations. The only gleam of statesmanship shown in these years by Henry Sidney (Sidney, Sir Henry), lord deputy (1565–71, 1575–78), was that he managed to avoid a major combination against the government's religious policy. The Butlers were induced to submit, the planters were given only limited support, and a head-on collision with Turlough Luineach was averted. When the Ulster plantation plans could not be carried out against Irish resistance, the queen wisely decided that they should be dropped. The pardon of the Butlers pacified Leinster, and, although in Munster the earl of Desmond's cousin James Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald, James Fitzmaurice), called “Fitzmaurice,” attempted to make the war one of religion, he, too, was eventually pardoned.

Despite his pardon, Fitzmaurice fled to the European continent in 1575, returning to Ireland in 1579 with papal approval for a Roman Catholic crusade against Queen Elizabeth. Although neither France nor Spain supported the crusade and Fitzmaurice was surprised and killed in August 1579, the government was extremely apprehensive. Gerald Fitzgerald, 14th earl of Desmond (Desmond, Gerald Fitzgerald, 14th earl of), then assumed direction of the enterprise. As a military commander he was wholly deficient, and his mediocrity may well have kept outstanding figures in the north and west out of the movement. The rebels were defeated, and in November 1580 a force of Italians and Spaniards was massacred at Dún an Óir (“Golden Fort”), Smerwick Harbour, County Kerry.

The origins of the third rebellion, the O'Neill (Tyrone) war, remain in doubt. Both Hugh Roe O'Donnell and Hugh O'Neill (Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of) (younger son of Feardorchadh), for whom the earldom of Tyrone had been revived in 1585 and who had been elected O'Neill on Turlough Luineach's death in 1595, certainly resented the extension of the royal administration, but the religious issue was probably more important. For a generation, exiled Roman Catholics had been trained as missionaries in the continental colleges of the Counter-Reformation, and the majority of those who returned to Ireland concluded that Catholicism could survive there only if Elizabeth were defeated. The outbreak of hostilities in Ulster in 1594 was at first confined to the northwest, where O'Donnell and Maguire, lord of Fermanagh, tried to drive out the English troops. The intervention of Hugh O'Neill was expected, if not inevitable. His participation with his brother-in-law O'Donnell proved decisive in the north and west, and the English were defeated both in Ulster and in Connaught. A more intimidating combination thus threatened Dublin than even in Shane O'Neill's time. Even in the Pale, arbitrary exactions and exclusion from offices won Hugh much sympathy, and it was said that he knew of Dublin Castle decisions before they were known in the city. Resentful of O'Neill's alleged ingratitude, Elizabeth became impatient of negotiations with him and finally sent Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex (Essex, Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of, Viscount Hereford, Lord Ferrers, Lord Bourchier), to Ireland (1599) to subdue him. But Essex lost his reputation by his inglorious progress through the country and by the speed with which he returned to England after a private conversation with O'Neill. Before Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy (Mountjoy, Charles Blount, 8th Lord), arrived in 1600 to replace Essex, the Irish leaders had gained the qualified support of Pope Clement VIII (Clement (VIII)) and of King Philip III of Spain. But Philip could afford to send only a minimal force to aid the Irish rebels. Its leader, Juan del Aguila, occupied Kinsale and was besieged (1601) by Mountjoy. O'Neill marched south to relieve Aguila, but a rash attempt to surprise the English lines by night proved disastrous (December 24, 1601); the Irish were defeated and the Spaniards surrounded. O'Neill held out in Ulster for more than a year but finally submitted a few days after the queen's death in March 1603.

Viewed generally, Elizabeth's Irish policy had the distinction of having reduced the country to obedience for the first time since the invasion of Henry II. But her policies had serious costs; the loyalty of the Irish was perennially strained over the religious issue, so that further rebellion was almost inevitable and virtually predictable in 1640 when the English government was embarrassed by the Second Bishops' War (Bishops' Wars) with Scotland. Economically, the towns and the countryside were needlessly exploited by the new administrators and planters, while the queen's expenditure was substantially increased. Commitments in Ireland were at least partly responsible for the poverty of the crown, which was to become a serious factor in precipitating its 17th-century conflict with Parliament.

As soon as James's policy became clear, the earls of Tyrone and of Tyrconnel and other Ulster Gaelic lords joined the flight from Ireland. Their departure opened the way for the plantation of Ulster by a new landowning class, which included Scots as well as Englishmen. This proved the most successful British settlement in Ireland, mainly because British tenantry and labourers were introduced as well as landlords. The newcomers were mainly from the Scottish Lowlands, and at first the English feared them almost more than they feared the Irish. Indeed, the name London was appended to that of the historic ecclesiastical settlement of Derry (Londonderry) in an attempt to counter the influence of the newcomers. The Presbyterianism of the Scottish immigrants was successfully kept at bay until the time of the English Civil Wars; the Anglican bishoprics in Ireland were well-endowed and powerful, and it was not until 1643 that the first presbytery was established in Belfast.

In the Parliament of 1613–15, which was summoned to ratify the Ulster plantation, a small Protestant majority was achieved because many new boroughs had been created in the newly planted areas. But government was concerned more with the appearance than the reality of consent, and no Parliament was called again until 1633. In the last years of James's reign, pressure from his Spanish and French allies caused him to concede toleration to the Roman Catholics, and from 1618 a Catholic hierarchy was in residence in Ireland.

A general rising of the Irish in Ulster was almost inevitable. It took place in October 1641, and thousands of colonists were murdered or fled. A Roman Catholic confederacy was formed at Kilkenny in 1642, but it did not succeed in welding together the various groups of which it was composed. During the period of the English Civil Wars there were Irish confederate armies in Ulster and in Leinster; English parliamentary armies operated in the north and south; and Dublin was held by James, duke of Ormonde (Ormonde, James Butler, 12th earl and 1st duke of), commanding an army of Protestant royalists. Negotiations for peace between Ormonde and the confederates were difficult and protracted; and in 1646, when it was clear that Charles I's cause was lost, Ormonde surrendered Dublin to a parliamentary commander. The confederates in isolation could offer little resistance (1649–50) to Oliver Cromwell (Cromwell, Oliver). By 1652 all Irish resistance was over.

During the Commonwealth and Protectorate, authority in Ireland was exercised by parliamentary commissioners and chief governors. A union of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, effected in 1653, resulted in Irish representatives attending Parliaments held in London in 1654, 1656, and 1659. By an Act of Settlement, Ireland, regarded as conquered territory, was parceled out among soldiers and creditors of the Commonwealth, and only those Irish landowners able to prove their constant support of the parliamentary cause escaped having their estates confiscated. Of these, those who were Roman Catholics were still obliged to exchange land owned to the northeast or south of the River Shannon for land in Connaught. Catholics and Anglicans were forbidden to practice their religion, but the campaign against Irish Catholicism was not successful. After the Restoration (1660) Charles II personally favoured complete religious toleration, but the forces of militant Protestantism sometimes proved too strong for him. The Commonwealth parliamentary union was, after 1660, treated as null and void.

Under James II, advantage was taken of the king's Roman Catholicism to reverse the tendencies of the preceding reign. After his flight from England to France in 1688, James crossed to Ireland, where in Parliament the Acts of Settlement and Explanation were repealed and provision was made for the restoration of expropriated Catholics. When William III landed in Ireland to oppose James, the country divided denominationally, but the real issue was not religion but land. After his defeat at the Battle of the Boyne (Boyne, Battle of the) in 1690, James fled to France, but his Catholic supporters continued in arms until defeated at Aughrim and obliged to surrender in 1691 at Limerick. However, James's supporters secured either the right to go overseas or, if they accepted William's regime, immunity from discriminatory laws. But civil articles to secure toleration for the Catholics were not ratified, thus enabling later Irish leaders to denounce the “broken treaty” of Limerick. Immediately after Limerick, the Protestant position was secured by acts of the English Parliament declaring illegal the acts of King James's Parliament in Ireland and restricting to Protestants membership of future Irish Parliaments. The sale of the lands forfeited by James and some of his supporters further reduced the Catholic landownership in the country; by 1703 it was less than 15 percent. On this foundation was established the Protestant Ascendancy.

The Protestant Ascendancy was a supremacy of that proportion of the population, about one-tenth, that belonged to the established Protestant Episcopalian church. They celebrated their position as a ruling class by annual recollections of their victories over their hated popish enemies. Not only the Catholic majority but also the Presbyterians and other Nonconformists, whose combined numbers exceeded those of the church establishment, were excluded from full political rights, notably by the test act of 1704, which made tenure of office dependent on willingness to receive communion according to the Protestant Episcopalian (Church of Ireland) rite. Because of their banishment from public life, the history of the Roman Catholic Irish in the 18th century is concerned almost exclusively with the activities of exiled soldiers and priests, many of whom distinguished themselves in the service of continental monarchs. Details of the lives of the unrecorded Roman Catholic majority in rural Ireland can be glimpsed only from ephemeral literature in English and from the Gaelic poetry of the four provinces.

The Protestant Ascendancy of 18th-century Ireland began in subordination to that of England but ended in asserting its independence. In the 1690s commercial jealousy compelled the Irish Parliament to destroy the Irish woolen export trade, and in 1720 the Declaratory Act affirmed the right of the British Parliament to legislate for Ireland and transferred to the British House of Lords (Lords, House of) the powers of a supreme court in Irish law cases. By the end of the first quarter of the 18th century, resentment at this subordination had grown sufficiently to enable the celebrated pamphleteer Jonathan Swift (Swift, Jonathan) to whip up a storm of protest over the affair of “Wood's halfpence.” William Wood, an English manufacturer, had been authorized to mint coins for Ireland; the outcry against alleged exploitation of the lesser country by arbitrary creation of a monopoly became so violent that it could be terminated only by withdrawing the concession from Wood.

Nevertheless, it was another 30 years before a similar protest occurred. In 1751 a group was organized to defeat government resolutions in the Irish Parliament appropriating a financial surplus as the English administrators rather than the Irish legislators saw fit. Although in 1768 the Irish Parliament was made more sensitive to public opinion by a provision for fresh elections every eight years instead of merely at the beginning of a new reign, it remained sufficiently controlled by the government to pass sympathetic resolutions on the revolt of the American colonies.

The U.S. War of Independence (American Revolution) greatly influenced Irish politics, not least because it removed government troops from Ireland, and the Protestant Irish volunteer corps, spontaneously formed to defend the country against possible French attack, exercised a coercive influence for reform. A patriotic opposition led by Henry Flood (Flood, Henry) and Henry Grattan (Grattan, Henry) began an agitation that led in 1782 to the repeal of the Declaratory Act of 1720 and to an amendment of Poynings's Law to give legislative initiative to the Irish Parliament. In this period many of the disadvantages suffered by Roman Catholics in Ireland were abolished, and in 1793 the British government, seeking to win Catholic loyalty on the outbreak of war against revolutionary France, gave them the franchise and admission to most civil offices. The government further attempted to conciliate Catholic opinion in 1795 by founding the seminary of Maynooth to provide education for the Catholic clergy. But the Protestant Ascendancy had become concerned about its position and resisted efforts to make the Irish Parliament more representative. The outbreak of the French Revolution had effected a temporary alliance between an intellectual elite among the Presbyterians and leading middle-class Catholics; these, under the inspiration of Wolfe Tone (Tone, Wolfe), founded societies of United Irishmen (United Irishmen, Society of), a series of radical political clubs. After the outbreak of war, the societies, reinforced by agrarian malcontents, were driven underground. In despair they sought the military support of revolutionary France, which between 1796 and 1798 dispatched a series of abortive naval expeditions to Ireland. The United Irishmen were preparing for rebellion, which broke out in May 1798 but was widespread only in Ulster and in Wexford in the south. Although the rebellion was unsuccessful, it brought the Irish question forcibly to the attention of the British cabinet, and the prime minister, William Pitt (Pitt, William, The Younger), planned and carried through an amalgamation of the British and Irish Parliaments, merging the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom. Despite substantial opposition in the Irish Parliament, the measure passed into law, taking effect on January 1, 1801. To Grattan and his supporters the union of Ireland and Great Britain seemed the end of the Irish nation; the last protest of the United Irishmen was made in Robert Emmet (Emmet, Robert)'s abortive rebellion of 1803.

Although the late 16th century was marked by the destruction of Gaelic civilization in the upper levels of society, it was preserved among the ordinary people of the northwest, west, and southwest, who continued to speak Irish and who maintained a way of life remote from that of the new landlord class. The 17th-century confiscations made Ireland a land of great estates and, except for Dublin, of small towns decaying under the impact of British restrictions on trade. Except on the Ulster plantations, the tenantry was relatively poor in comparison with that of England and employed inferior agricultural methods. Over large parts of the east and south, tillage farming had given way to pasturage. In the north of Ireland, a somewhat similar tendency, creating a decline in the demand for labour, led in the early 18th century to the migration of substantial numbers of Ulster Scots to North America. In Ulster there gradually emerged a tenantry who compelled their landlords to maintain them in their farms against the claims and bids of Roman Catholic competitors now once again legally entitled to hold land. This purpose immensely strengthened the Orange Order (popularly called the Orangemen), founded in 1795 in defense of the Protestant Ascendancy. Increasingly it linked the Protestant gentry and farmers, while excluding Catholics from breaking into this privileged ring. Tillage farming was maintained in Ulster more extensively than in the south and west, where there developed on the poorer lands a system of subdivision apparently necessitated by population increase. Apart from folklore and literary sources, little is known of the lives of the ordinary people, and even of the gentry the evidence, apart from estate records, is rarely extensive.

Little need be said of the culture of the Anglo-Irish in the same period, as it followed so closely the traditions of Britain and, very occasionally, those of the rest of Europe. Gradually during the 18th century, the new landowning class developed some appreciation of the visual arts. But the really original achievement of the period was in literature, particularly in drama, where the rhetorical gifts of the people secured an audience. In this period there was a strong connection between rhetoric and the arts, as between oratory, themes of social decay, and the consoling power of language and form. Works such as Oliver Goldsmith (Goldsmith, Oliver)'s The Deserted Village and The Traveller, Edmund Burke (Burke, Edmund)'s speeches, and the speeches and plays of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Sheridan, Richard Brinsley) are manifestations of a rhetorical tradition central to Irish feelings.

The Act of Union (Union, Act of) provided that Ireland would have in the United Kingdom about one-fifth of the representation of Great Britain, with 100 members in the House of Commons (Commons, House of). The union of the churches of England and Ireland (Ireland, Church of) as the established denominations of their respective countries was also effected, and the preeminent position in Ireland of Protestant Episcopalianism was further secured by the continuation of the British test act, which virtually excluded Nonconformists (both Roman Catholic and Protestant) from Parliament and from membership in municipal corporations. Not until 1828–29 did the repeal of the Test Act and the concession of Catholic emancipation provide political equality for most purposes. It was also provided that there should be free trade between the two countries and that Irish merchandise would be admitted to British colonies on the same terms as British merchandise.

At first, and perhaps for more than one-third of the 19th century, the auguries of success for the union between Ireland and Great Britain were favourable. After the defeat of Napoleon (Napoleon I) at Waterloo (Waterloo, Battle of) in 1815, political discontent increased but became concentrated, so far as the Roman Catholics were concerned, on securing their emancipation. Until this was achieved there had not clearly emerged any notable difference in outlook between the Catholics and Presbyterians; but the dramatic manner in which the Catholic Daniel O'Connell (O'Connell, Daniel) was elected to a parliamentary seat for County Clare (1828), subsequently sweeping the emancipation movement to victory, provoked a panic among timid Protestants and led to an alliance between the Presbyterians and their old oppressors, the Protestant Episcopalians. After emancipation, the middle-class Catholics and Protestants drifted apart, the latter increasingly clinging to the union, the former more slowly but at last decisively coming to seek its repeal.

O'Connell's adherence to the cause of repeal did not prevent him from participating actively in British politics. Lord Melbourne (Melbourne, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount, Lord Melbourne, Baron of Kilmore, Baron Melbourne of Melbourne), the Whig prime minister, by a bargain known as the Lichfield House Compact (1835), secured O'Connell's support in return for a promise of “justice for Ireland.” But meanwhile the Tories, led by Sir Robert Peel (Peel, Sir Robert, 2nd Baronet), exercised through their control of the House of Lords an effective restriction on promised social and economic reforms for Ireland, and, when Peel returned to power in the early 1840s, O'Connell, despairing of further concessions, began a massive campaign outside Parliament for repeal of the union, notably by organizing large popular demonstrations. A climax was reached in October 1843 when troops and artillery were called out to suppress the mass meeting arranged at Clontarf, outside Dublin. O'Connell's method of popular agitation within the law proved unavailing, however, and his influence thereafter rapidly declined.

Associated with O'Connell's repeal agitation was the Young Ireland movement, a group connected with a repeal weekly newspaper, The Nation, and led by its editor Charles Gavan Duffy (Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan), its chief contributor Thomas Osborne Davis (Davis, Thomas Osborne), and its special land correspondent John Blake Dillon (Dillon, John). They became increasingly restless at O'Connell's cautious policy after Clontarf, however, and in 1848 became involved in an abortive rising. Its failure, and the deportation or escape from Ireland of most of the Young Ireland leaders, destroyed the repeal movement.

For about 20 years after the Great Potato Famine, political agitation was subdued, while emigration continued to reduce the population every year. The landowners also suffered severely from inability to collect rents, and there was a wholesale transfer of estates to new owners. Evictions were widespread, and cottages were demolished at once by the landlords to prevent other impoverished tenants from occupying them. The flow of emigrants to the United States was encouraged by invitations from Irish people already there; and in England, the new industrial cities and shipping centres attracted large settlements of poor migrants from Ireland.

Among the exiles both in the United States and in England, the Fenian movement spread widely. A secret revolutionary society named for the Fianna, the Irish armed force in legendary times, it aimed at securing Ireland's political freedom by exploiting every opportunity to injure English interests.

In Ireland, Fenian ideals were propagated in the newspaper The Irish People; and in 1865 four Fenian leaders, Charles Kickham, John O'Leary, Thomas Clarke Luby, and Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, were sentenced to long-term imprisonment for publishing treasonable documents. During the next two years, plans gradually developed for a projected nationwide rising, financed largely by funds collected in the United States. It took place in March 1867 but was easily crushed and its leaders imprisoned. The prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone (Gladstone, William Ewart), at last recognizing the necessity for drastic Irish reforms, disestablished the Protestant Church of Ireland in 1869 and in 1870 introduced the first Irish Land Act, which conceded the principles of secure tenure and compensation for improvements made to property. He may also have been concerned at the cleavage between English and Irish public opinion caused by the execution in Manchester of William P. Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien for involvement in a Fenian prisoner-rescue operation that resulted in the shooting of a police sergeant. To most British people (and to many in Ireland) the “Manchester murderers” richly deserved their fate; to most Irish nationalists, however, they were the “Manchester martyrs,” celebrated in ballad and legend.

Soon afterward, in 1870, a constitutional movement, the Home Government Association (Home Rule League), was founded by Isaac Butt (Butt, Isaac), a prominent unionist lawyer interested in land reform. In the election of 1874 it returned about 60 members to Parliament. The movement was tolerated rather than encouraged by the various groups of Irish nationalists, and it was not fully supported by the Roman Catholic clergy until the 1880s.

A return of bad harvests in 1879 brought new fears of famine, and Michael Davitt (Davitt, Michael) founded the Irish Land League, seeking to achieve for tenants security of tenure, fair rents, and freedom to sell property. A formidable agrarian agitation developed when Davitt joined forces with Charles Stewart Parnell (Parnell, Charles Stewart), a young landowner and member of Parliament in the Home Rule Party, which soon elected him as its leader in place of Butt. Parnell undertook a tour of North America to raise funds for the Land League; there he was influenced by two Irish Americans, John Devoy, a leading member of Clan na Gael, an effective American Fenian organization, and Pat Ford, whose New York paper The Irish World preached militant republicanism and hatred of England. At Westminster Parnell adopted a policy of persistent obstruction, which compelled attention to Irish needs by bringing parliamentary business to a standstill. Gladstone (Gladstone, William Ewart) was forced to introduce his Land Act of 1881, conceding fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale of the tenant's interest.

Parnell's success was not achieved without serious difficulties, including the ultimate proscription of the Land League by the government and the imprisonment of its leaders. As a result, Parnell used his parliamentary party, then increased to 86, to defeat and thus dismiss from office Gladstone's Liberal government, already unpopular in England as a result of its failure to relieve the British forces under Charles George Gordon (Gordon, Charles George) at Khartoum, Sudan, in 1884. For a while Conservatives and Liberals both negotiated with Parnell, but ultimately Gladstone became converted to Home Rule, introducing a bill to bring it into effect after he returned to office in 1886. The bill, however, was defeated by a combination of Conservative-Unionists influenced by Irish Orangemen (Orange Order) and splinter groups from the Liberal Party. There followed 20 years during which Irish nationalist ambitions seemed frustrated, partly because Conservative-Unionists were mainly in power and partly because bitter internal rivalries discredited the Irish Nationalist Party after Parnell's involvement (1889) in a divorce suit. Meanwhile, Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill (1893) was rejected in the House of Lords. Only in 1900 was a Parnellite, John Redmond (Redmond, John), able to reunite the nationalists. In the last years of the century, partly in reaction to political frustrations, a cultural nationalist movement developed, led by Douglas Hyde (Hyde, Douglas) and Eoin MacNeill. Through the Gaelic League much was done to revive interest in the speaking and study of Irish. These cultural movements were reinforced by others, such as that of the Sinn Féin (“We Ourselves”) movement led by Arthur Griffith (Griffith, Arthur), who preached a doctrine of political self-help. It subsequently emerged that a Fenian organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, had revived and was secretly recruiting membership through various cultural societies and through the Gaelic Athletic Association, founded to promote specifically Irish sports.

At the close of the century the Conservatives initiated a policy designed to “kill Home Rule by kindness” by introducing constructive reforms in Ireland. Their most important achievement in this field was the Land Purchase Act of 1903. By providing generous inducements to landlords to sell their estates, the act effected by government mediation the transfer of landownership to the occupying tenants.

After the great Liberal victory of 1906, Redmond decided to force the Liberals to revive Home Rule, and, when David Lloyd George (Lloyd George, David)'s radical budget provoked a collision with the House of Lords in 1909, Redmond seized his opportunity. He agreed to support the campaign of the prime minister, H.H. Asquith (Asquith, H H, 1st Earl Of Oxford And Asquith, Viscount Asquith Of Morley), against the Lords in return for the promise of a Home Rule bill. The reduction of the power of the Lords by the 1911 Parliament Act seemed to promise success for the third Home Rule bill, introduced in 1912. But in the meantime the Irish unionists, under their colourful leader, Sir Edward Carson (Carson, Edward Henry Carson, Baron), had mounted an effective countermovement, backed by most of the British unionists. Thousands of Ulstermen (Ulster) signed the Solemn League and Covenant to resist Home Rule (1912), and Carson announced that a provisional government would be formed. At first planning to reject Home Rule for all of Ireland, the unionists gradually fell back on a demand for Ulster (where unionists were predominant) to be excluded from its scope. Redmond's claim that there was “no Ulster question”—implying that even among the Ulster members of Parliament there was a majority for Home Rule—hardened the Protestant and unionist resistance in the areas around Belfast. Down, Antrim, Armagh, and Derry all contained unionist majorities; Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan had strong Home Rule majorities; and Tyrone and Fermanagh had small Home Rule majorities. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was organized and boasted of active sympathy among army officers; their boasts became formidable when all the officers in the cavalry brigade at the Curragh suddenly announced in March 1914 that they would resign if ordered to move against the Ulster volunteers. Meanwhile, a nationalist force, the Irish Volunteers, had been launched in Dublin in November 1913 to counter the UVF. Both forces gathered arms, and Ireland was on the verge of civil war when World War I broke out. Assured of Redmond's support in recruiting for the army, Asquith (Asquith, H H, 1st Earl Of Oxford And Asquith, Viscount Asquith Of Morley) enacted Home Rule but followed this with a Suspensory Act, delaying implementation until the return of peace.

Meanwhile in Ireland the revolutionary element gained support from those alienated by Redmond's pro-British attitude. Before the end of 1914 the Irish Republican Brotherhood made full plans for a revolutionary outbreak. Sir Roger Casement (Casement, Sir Roger) went to Germany to solicit help, but he obtained only obsolete arms and was himself arrested on his return to Ireland on April 21, 1916. When the rising took place three days later, on Easter (Easter Rising) Monday, only about 1,000 men and women were actually engaged. A provisional Irish government was proclaimed. The general post office and other parts of Dublin were seized; street fighting continued for about a week until Tom Clarke, Patrick Pearse (Pearse, Patrick Henry), and other republican leaders were forced to surrender. Their subsequent execution aroused Irish public opinion and led to the defeat and virtual extinction of Redmond's constitutional party at Westminster in the general election of December 1918. Their successful opponents, calling themselves Sinn Féin and supporting the republican program announced in 1916, were led by Eamon de Valera (de Valera, Eamon), a surviving leader of the Easter Rising, who campaigned for Irish independence in the United States as “president of the Irish Republic.” Again the republicans set up their provisional government, elected by the Irish members of Parliament at a meeting in Dublin called Dáil Éireann, the “Irish Assembly,” which sought to provide an alternative to British administration. Simultaneously the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was organized to resist British administration and to secure recognition for the government of the Irish republic. Its members soon engaged in widespread ambushes and attacks on police barracks, while the government retaliated with ruthless reprisals. A large proportion of the Irish police resigned and were replaced by British recruits, known from their temporary uniforms as Black and Tans.

In this condition of virtual civil war, the Irish population in the south became alienated from British rule, and the London government was forced, partly under American influence, to pass the Government of Ireland Act (1920). By this measure Ireland was divided into two self-governing areas, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Both were to enjoy, within the United Kingdom, limited powers of self-government. After a general election in Ireland, King George V opened the Parliament of Northern Ireland in Belfast (1921) and in his speech appealed for an end to fratricidal strife. The king's initiative forced the British prime minister David Lloyd George (Lloyd George, David) to open negotiations with de Valera, but for some time progress proved impossible because neither side would admit the other's legality. Ultimately, on December 6, 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on behalf of the United Kingdom by Lloyd George and leading members of his cabinet and on behalf of Ireland by Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins (Collins, Michael), and other members of the republican cabinet.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty provided that in the future Ireland should have the

The new dominion was to be known as the Irish Free State. This peace agreement, ratified by the British Parliament, became operative when it also was passed (January 1922) by a meeting of the Dáil. The new state comprised only 26 of the island's 32 counties; the northeastern area, known as Northern Ireland, remained part of the United Kingdom.

The terms of the treaty had been accepted by the Irish signatories only because Lloyd George had threatened war on Ireland if they were rejected. A prescribed oath of allegiance to the British crown and the provisions allowing Northern Ireland to remain outside the new state were considered particularly obnoxious by many Irish. De Valera (de Valera, Eamon) and other republicans immediately repudiated the treaty, and, after its passage in the Dáil, de Valera resigned the presidency. Collins (Collins, Michael), chairman of the provisional government set up according to the terms of the treaty, and Griffith (Griffith, Arthur), the new president of the Dáil, desired an immediate general election to obtain a verdict on the treaty; in the deteriorating conditions Collins and de Valera eventually made an agreement known as the Pact (May 20, 1922), in which it was settled that government (pro-treaty) and republican candidates would not oppose each other and that de Valera would work within the electoral arrangement. But the Pact naturally could not bind other parties, and in the election on June 16 republicans were ousted in favour of members of a labour party and a farmers' party and by independents, thus reducing the anti-treaty vote to a small minority. Before the Dáil could meet, civil war had broken out between the government and the extremist republicans, who were allegedly accessories to the assassination in London on June 22 of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (Wilson, Sir Henry Hughes, Baronet) soon after his acceptance of the position of military adviser to the government of Northern Ireland. The republicans in Dublin had occupied the Four Courts (central courts of justice) in April and in late June. Under pressure from Britain, which also provided military equipment, Collins ordered them to retire. Serious fighting ensued for a week, until the Courts were blown up, and Rory O'Connor, the Dublin republican leader, surrendered. Meanwhile, de Valera, who had escaped to the southwest, was openly supporting the republicans. Griffith and Collins decided that no further compromise was possible, and military operations were begun. The strain had weighed so heavily on Griffith that he died suddenly on August 12, and Collins, inspecting the military operations, was killed in an ambush in County Cork on August 22.

The government thus lost its two most prominent leaders, and surviving ministers could not appear openly without armed protection. Moreover, there was urgency in that, by the terms of the treaty, the newly elected Dáil was required to frame its constitution before December 6, 1922. It met on September 9, elected as the new president William Thomas Cosgrave (Cosgrave, William Thomas), and, in the absence of the republican deputies, quickly passed the clauses of the constitution defining the relations of the Irish Free State with the British crown and outlining arrangements for imperial defense. Timothy Michael Healy (Healy, T.M.), a veteran follower of Parnell who had later supported Sinn Féin, was then appointed governor-general, and Cosgrave became president of the executive council. The new constitution was also ratified by the British Parliament.

Both before and after the ratification of the constitution, the government resorted to strong measures to quell disorder and violence. Its decision to execute those found in unauthorized possession of firearms embittered Irish politics for years afterward. Numerous republican insurgents were also imprisoned, and 77 were executed, including the republican leaders who had surrendered in the Four Courts. Although republican opposition was at first more bitter than ever, it was less organized and did not enjoy the support of most people; by May 1923, on de Valera's recommendation, armed resistance to the Irish Free State ended.

At the end of August 1923 the fourth Dáil was elected, on a basis of adult suffrage for men and women. De Valera retained his personal following, and his party won more than one-third of the seats in the Dáil. Cosgrave's party won less than half the total number of seats, but, as the republicans refused to sit in the new Dáil, he had a majority among those who did attend. The absence of any effective opposition party greatly strengthened the power of the new government, and in the following years it displayed great energy. Despite initial economic difficulties, it pursued an efficient farming policy and carried through important hydroelectric projects. Government was increasingly centralized, with the elimination of various corrupt borough corporations; Kevin O'Higgins (O'Higgins, Kevin Christopher), as minister for justice, carried through many judicial reforms, and an efficient civil service was organized.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 had provided that, if Northern Ireland did not enter the Irish Free State, a boundary commission must establish the frontier between the two countries. Two of the six excluded counties, Tyrone and Fermanagh, contained clear, though small, nationalist majorities, and the southern portions of both Down and Armagh had for years elected nationalist members. Despite Northern Ireland's reluctance, the Boundary Commission was established and sat in secret session during 1925. But it recommended only minor changes, which all three governments rejected as less satisfactory than maintaining the status quo.

In the general election of June 1927, Cosgrave's support in the Dáil was further reduced, but he nevertheless formed a new ministry, in which O'Higgins became vice president of the Executive Council. O'Higgins's assassination by republicans on July 10 suddenly revived old feuds, and Cosgrave passed a Public Safety Act, declaring all revolutionary societies treasonable. He forced the republicans to acknowledge allegiance to the crown before being seated in the Dáil, though de Valera decried the oath as an “empty political formula.” Shortly thereafter the new republican party, Fianna Fáil, led by de Valera, albeit reluctantly accepting the legitimacy of the Irish Free State, and allied with the Labour Party and the National League, almost defeated Cosgrave, who thereupon dissolved the Dáil. In new elections, Cosgrave won 61 of the Dáil's 128 seats as compared with Fianna Fáil's 57 and again formed a ministry. In the economic depression of the early 1930s, unemployment and general discontent with the government led to its defeat in February 1932. Fianna Fáil won enough seats for de Valera, with Labour Party support, to be able to form a new government.

De Valera entered office with a policy of encouraging industry and improving the social services. He abolished the oath of allegiance to the crown and also stopped payment to Britain of interest on the capital advanced under the Land Acts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This refusal led to a tariff war with Britain. The country endorsed his policies in January 1933 by returning him to the Dáil with 77 seats and the support of the Labour Party.

De Valera invoked the Public Safety Act against the Blueshirts (Blue Shirt), a quasi-fascist body organized (by Cosgrave's militant supporters) allegedly to protect treatyites from republican extremists at public meetings. The government's relations with the republicans who still refused to recognize the Irish Free State also deteriorated, and many were arrested and imprisoned in the mid-1930s.

De Valera introduced proposals for a new constitution in 1937. The power of the crown was ended, and the office of governor-general was replaced by that of a president elected by national suffrage. The first president was Douglas Hyde (Hyde, Douglas), a Celtic scholar who had been associated with the Gaelic revival since 1890. The new constitution did not proclaim an independent republic, but it replaced the title of the Irish Free State with the word Éire (Ireland). The new constitution was ratified by a plebiscite in the 1937 general election (in which de Valera was again victorious) and became operative on December 29, 1937. An agreement in April 1938 ended British occupation of three naval bases that had been left in British hands by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The dispute over the land-purchase annuities was settled, and the tariff warfare abated.

At the outbreak of World War II, de Valera renewed his statement, made in 1938, that Ireland would not become a base for attacks on Great Britain. Under the Emergency Powers Act of 1939, hundreds of IRA members were interned without trial, and six were executed between 1940 and 1944. His government, reelected in 1943 and 1944, remained strictly neutral, despite German air raids on Dublin in 1941 and, after the United States entered the war in December 1941, pressure from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the general election of 1948, Fianna Fáil won 68 of the 147 seats in the Dáil, but de Valera refused to enter a coalition. John A. Costello (Costello, John A) emerged as the leader of a bloc composed of his own party, Fine Gael, and several smaller groups. Out of office, de Valera toured the world advocating the unification and independence of Ireland. Fearful of de Valera's prestige, Costello introduced in the Dáil the Republic of Ireland Act, which ended the fiction of Commonwealth membership that had been maintained since 1937. The act took effect in April 1949. Britain recognized the new status of Ireland but declared that unity with the six counties of Northern Ireland could not occur without consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland. Economic difficulties and a controversy between the minister for health and the Roman Catholic hierarchy over the Public Health Act weakened Costello's government, and, after the general election of 1951, de Valera again became prime minister. His ministry aroused sufficient discontent for Costello to be returned to power in 1954; however, economic troubles enabled Fianna Fáil to win a majority in 1957. This was to be de Valera's last administration. He retired as prime minister in 1959 but was elected to the presidency, serving until 1973.

Sean Lemass (Lemass, Sean F), prime minister from 1959 to 1966, initiated measures to stimulate Ireland's seriously stagnating economy. Under the First Programme for Economic Expansion (1958–63), economic protection was dismantled and foreign investment encouraged; a growth rate that was planned to reach 2 percent actually reached 4 percent. This prosperity brought profound social and cultural changes to what had been one of the poorest countries in Europe. Emigration substantially declined, consumer spending increased, and religious social teaching was challenged.

Ireland, like Britain, suffered setbacks in attempting to join the European Economic Community (EEC), but both countries formally entered that organization on January 1, 1973. In elections held later that year, the Fianna Fáil government of Jack Lynch (Lynch, Jack) (prime minister from 1966) was defeated by a Fine Gael–Labour coalition led by Liam Cosgrave (Cosgrave, Liam). The worldwide oil crisis and recession of 1974–75 forced the imposition of deflationary economic policies, a wealth tax, and attempts to tax farmers' incomes. Lynch returned to power in 1977, and Fianna Fáil proposed an ambitious economic policy based on tax cuts and the creation of new enterprises through foreign borrowing. Despite a brief boom, serious economic problems became evident by 1980. These included declining agricultural prices, rising prices for imported oil, only a small increase in output, and a rapidly growing population, nearly half of which was under age 25. Moreover, foreign borrowing increased, and unemployment and inflation rose steeply. Civil strife in Northern Ireland, culminating in the revival of the IRA there, provided an uneasy backdrop.

The early 1980s were politically volatile. Although no clear majority emerged in the election of 1981, Garret FitzGerald (FitzGerald, Garret) of the Fine Gael–Labour coalition took power, ousting Charles Haughey (Haughey, Charles), who had succeeded Lynch as Fianna Fáil prime minister in 1979. The major issues of the campaign were economic policy, including the imposition of a wealth tax, and the removal of a constitutional ban on divorce. The budget of the coalition government was defeated in January 1982, and a general election in February returned Fianna Fáil and Haughey to power. The new government's tenure was short and uneasy. In the face of a large budget deficit, a program of severe public spending cuts was introduced. The government was defeated on a no-confidence vote in November, and another general election—the third in 18 months—followed. This time a Fine Gael–Labour coalition under the leadership of FitzGerald secured an overall governing majority.

By the mid-1980s the economy showed signs of improvement. Inflation was at its lowest level in nearly two decades, helped by lower oil prices. However, the budget deficit and high unemployment continued to pose considerable problems. Emigration, a barometer of Irish economic health, again began to increase in the mid-1980s. The prolonged recession had once again brought to the surface doubts and anxieties about the future of the Irish state and its real independence.

In February 1987 Fianna Fáil returned to power under Haughey but without an overall majority. The new Progressive Democrat Party (Progressive Democrats), formed in 1985 by former supporters of Fianna Fáil, made a strong showing. Following a decision in November 1986 to drop its abstentious policy and contest future Dáil elections, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisional IRA (so called because it split from the old IRA over the use of force in Northern Ireland), stood on a socialist and pro-IRA platform but failed to win a seat. Shortly after the election, the former prime minister Garret FitzGerald resigned as leader of Fine Gael and was succeeded by Alan Dukes.

The new government embarked on a program of comprehensive public spending cuts, which secured the support of Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats, though the Labour Party, traditionally committed to high public expenditure programs, was more critical. The austerity measures were successful, and by the early 1990s the country's economic position had improved considerably. Inflation was low, budget deficits were reduced, and the annual growth rate was averaging more than 5 percent. The economy continued to boom throughout the late 1990s, fueled by the high-technology sector, with unemployment dropping to historically low levels.

In 1990 Mary Robinson (Robinson, Mary) was elected the republic's first woman president. The election of a candidate with socialist and feminist sympathies was regarded as a watershed in Irish political life, reflecting the changes taking place in Irish society. Haughey was replaced in 1992 as leader of Fianna Fáil by Albert Reynolds (Reynolds, Albert), who also became prime minister. A Fianna Fáil–Labour coalition came to power after the 1992 general election but collapsed two years later. Another coalition, consisting of members of the Fine Gael, Labour, and Democratic Left parties, then took office, with Fine Gael leader John Bruton (Bruton, John) as prime minister. The Bruton government lasted until the general election of June 1997, after which Fianna Fáil formed a new coalition with party leader Bertie Ahern (Ahern, Bertie) as prime minister. In October Mary McAleese (McAleese, Mary) was elected president, the first Irish president from Northern Ireland (she was reelected in 2004). In 2002 Fianna Fáil narrowly failed to gain an outright majority in the Dáil, and it formed another coalition government with the Progressive Democrats, headed again by Ahern. Although dogged by criticism through much of his tenure, Ahern capitalized on his personal popularity to lead Fianna Fáil to another election victory in 2007, and he began a new term as prime minister of yet another coalition government. In May 2008, however, in response to growing criticism of alleged past financial improprieties, Ahern resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Brian Cowen (Cowen, Brian).

In May 1987 a constitutional referendum ratified the Single European Act and served to confirm Ireland's participation in the EEC (and later the European Community 【EC】 and European Union 【EU】). The act called for the harmonization of social and fiscal measures taken within the EEC and was a forerunner of the 1991 Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty) (Maastricht Treaty), which paved the way for the establishment of economic and monetary union. Irish voters approved the Maastricht Treaty by a large majority in a referendum held in 1992. In 1999 Ireland became a charter member of the euro, the EU's single currency. On January 1, 2002, Ireland, along with 11 other EU countries, replaced its banknotes and coins with the EU currency. The robust Irish economy wavered early in the new millennium but soon returned to steady growth, though not on the scale of the booming 1990s.

The close relationship between the Irish republic and the Roman Catholic (Roman Catholicism) church (church and state) was highlighted by the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland in 1979, the first visit there of a reigning pontiff. The relationship was tested in the 1980s and '90s, however, as attempts were made to alter Irish law in relation to Roman Catholic doctrine. The clause in the 1937 constitution acknowledging the special position of the Catholic church was removed, and in 1983 the efforts of Catholic pressure groups resulted in a referendum on a draft constitutional amendment reinforcing the republic's existing ban on abortion. After a divisive campaign, with barely a majority of the electorate voting in the referendum, voters approved the amendment.

In 1985 the Roman Catholic church strenuously, but futilely, opposed the government's liberalization of legislation concerning contraception. Church-state relations were tested again the following year when a referendum to remove the constitutional ban against divorce was defeated. A second referendum on abortion, which strengthened the existing antiabortion law but enabled women to travel overseas to obtain an abortion, was approved in 1992. Another referendum to lift the ban on divorce was held in 1995; passing by only a small majority, it went into effect in 1997. At the end of the 1990s the Roman Catholic church in Ireland was rocked by a series of scandals, which did much to damage its reputation. In 2002, in Ireland's fifth abortion referendum in less than 20 years, voters narrowly rejected Prime Minister Ahern's attempt to disallow pregnant women claiming to be suicidal from traveling overseas to obtain an abortion. Underscoring the country's urban-rural division, Cork, Limerick, and all electoral districts in Dublin opposed closing the loophole, while a majority of voters in other areas of the country favoured Ahern's measure.

During the late 1950s and early '60s the Irish government was forced to deal with IRA attacks on British army posts along the Ulster border. An attempt to ease cross-border tensions was made in 1965, when Lemass, then Ireland's prime minister, and Terence O'Neill, Northern Ireland's prime minister, exchanged visits. In 1970 Prime Minister Lynch (Lynch, Jack) dismissed two of Ireland's cabinet ministers following an attempt to import arms for use in Northern Ireland.

The Irish government was increasingly preoccupied by the situation in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. In 1973 Prime Minister Cosgrave (Cosgrave, Liam) participated in talks with Edward Heath (Heath, Sir Edward), prime minister of Britain, and representatives of Northern Ireland, resulting in the Sunningdale Agreement. This accord recognized that the north's relationship with Britain could not be changed without the agreement of a majority of the population in Northern Ireland, and it provided for the establishment of a Council of Ireland composed of members from both the Dáil and the Northern Ireland assembly. The agreement collapsed the following year.

Although the republic was little affected by the violence in Ulster, there were a number of serious terrorist incidents. The murder of the British ambassador in Dublin in 1976 led to a state of emergency and the unpopular measure of strengthening emergency-powers legislation; and the assassination of Earl Louis Mountbatten (Mountbatten, Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl, Viscount Mountbatten Of Burma, Baron Romsey Of Romsey) of Burma (Britain's last viceroy in India) by the IRA three years later further intensified opposition to terrorism.

In 1981 Prime Minister FitzGerald launched a constitutional crusade to make the reunification of Ireland more attractive to Northern Ireland's Protestants. At the end of the year, the Irish and British governments set up an Anglo-Irish intergovernmental council to discuss matters of common concern, especially security. In 1984 the report of the New Ireland Forum—a discussion group that included representatives of the political parties in Ireland and Northern Ireland—set out three possible frameworks for political development in Ireland: those of a unitary state, a federal state, and joint sovereignty. Fianna Fáil preferred a unitary state, while Fine Gael and Labour preferred the federal solution. In November 1985 at Hillsborough in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Britain again agreed that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, and an intergovernmental conference was established to deal with political, security, and legal relations between the two parts of the island.

Despite Fianna Fáil's initial criticism of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Haughey government maintained support for the agreement while it was in power. Contacts between the Irish and British governments continued after February 1987 within the formal structure of the intergovernmental conference. Fears that the violence in Northern Ireland would spill into Ireland as a consequence of closer Anglo-Irish cooperation in the wake of the agreement proved unfounded.

In 1993 the Irish and British governments signed a joint peace initiative (the Downing Street Declaration), in which they pledged to seek mutually agreeable political structures in Northern Ireland and between the two islands. The following year the IRA (Irish Republican Army) declared a cease-fire, and for the next 18 months there was considerable optimism that a new period of political cooperation between north and south had been inaugurated. The cease-fire collapsed in 1996, however, and the IRA resumed its bombing campaign.

In 1998 Prime Minister Ahern played an important role in brokering the Belfast Agreement (also known as the Good Friday Agreement), which would create a Northern Ireland Assembly, establish north-south political structures, and amend Ireland's 1937 constitution by removing from it the claim to Northern Ireland. On May 22, 1998, the agreement was approved by 94 percent of voters in Ireland and by 71 percent in Northern Ireland. With the establishment of the power-sharing assembly, the Irish government continued to remain active in promoting peace and economic development in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly's assumption of power was halting, however, and was suspended intermittently, largely in response to the failure of the paramilitary forces to fully decommission and disarm. But in May 2007, following another round of new elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and two years after the IRA's renouncement of armed struggle, power sharing became a reality in Northern Ireland.