Ireland

  

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Ireland

Definition: Ireland

Ireland

Noun

1. A republic consisting of 26 of 32 counties comprising the island of Ireland; achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1921.

2. An island comprising the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

Date "Ireland" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1050. (references)

 

Specialty Definition: Ireland

DomainDefinition

Literature

Ireland or Erin is Celtic; from Eri or Iar (western). Lloyd (State Worthies, article "Grandison"), with a gravity which cannot but excite laughter, says the island is called the land of Ire because of the broils there, which have extended over four hundred years. Wormius derives the word from the Runic Yr, a bow. (See below.)
Ireland.
Called by the natives "Erin," i.e. Eri-innis, or Iar-innis (west island).
By the Welsh "Yver-den" (west valley).
By Apuleius, "Hibernia," which is Iernia, a corruption of Iar-inni-a.
By Juvenal (ii. 260) "Juverna" or "Juberna," the same as Ierna or Iernia.
By Claudian "Ouernia," the same.
By moderns "Ireland," which is Iar-en-land (land of the west).
The three great saints of Ireland are St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St. Bridget.
The fair maid of Ireland. Ignis fatuus (q.v.).
"He had read in former times of a Going Fire, called `Ignis Fatuus,' the fire of destiny; by some, `Will with the Wisp,' or `Jack with the Lantern;' and likewise, by some simple country people. `The Fair Maid of Ireland,' which used to lead wandering traveliers out of their way." - The Seven Champions of Christendom, i. 7.
The three tragic stories of the Irish.
(1) The death of the children of Touran; (2) the death of the children of Lir; (3) the death of the children of Usnach.
(O'Flanagan: Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, vol. i.)
Dean Ireland's scholarships. Four scholarships of 30 a year in the University of Oxford, founded by Dr. John Ireland, Dean of Westminster, in 1825, for Latin and Greek. They are tenable for four years.
The same person founded an "Exegetical Professorship" of 800 a year. Source: Brewer's Dictionary.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Abbeys and priories in the Republic of Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Abbeys and priories in the Republic of Ireland is a link page for any abbey, priory or other religious house in the Republic of Ireland.

See also: List of abbeys and priories, Abbeys and priories in Northern Ireland, Castles in the Republic of Ireland, Castles in Northern Ireland

County Clare

County Cork County Donegal County Dublin County Galway County Kerry County Kildare County Kilkenny County Limerick County Louth County Mayo County Meath County Offaly County Roscommon County Sligo County Tipperary County Westmeath County Wexford County Wicklow

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Constitution of Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The constitution of Ireland (Irish language: Bunreacht na hÉireann, pronounced bun-rockt na hair-inn) is the constitution of Éire, also known since 1949 as the Republic of Ireland.

The Drafting of Bunreacht na hÉireann

It was the work of Eamon de Valera, President of the Executive Council (prime minister) of the Irish Free State. The constitution was actually drafted in two languages, Irish and English; in Irish by Micheál Ó Gríobhtha, who worked in the Irish Department of Education, and in English by John Hearne, legal advisor to the Department of External Affairs (now called the Department of Foreign Affairs). De Valera served as his own External Affairs Minister, hence the use of the Department's Legal Advisor, with whom he had previously worked closely, as opposed to the Attorney-General or someone from the Department of the President of the Executive Council.

Though many presumed that the constitution was drafted in English and merely translated into Irish, in reality it was in effect written in both languages almost simultaneously, with each co-author borrowing from the other's work. The result unfortunately is that at a number of points the texts clash. In the event of such a clash, the Irish language, though ironically the less well worded legally, given that its author was not a lawyer, takes precedence.

The 1937 constitution was meant to assert the completion of the process of "constitutional autochthony" (the assertion of legal nationalism) that had seen de Valera amend the previous 1922 Constitution to remove references to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Oath of Allegiance, Appeals to the Privy Council, the British Crown, and Governor-General of the Irish Free State in the previous five years.

Bunreacht na hÉireann was passed by Dáil Éireann and then approved narrowly in a plebiscite of voters on July 1, 1937. It came into operation on December 29, 1937. Among the groups who voted against it were the opposition Fine Gael and Labour supporters, unionists, Commonwealth supporters and women. Its main support came from Fianna Fáil supporters and republicans.

Structure of the Bunreacht

The Constitution consists of a Preamble and 50 Articles arranged under 16 headings. These are:-

Transitory Provisions

The Transitory Provisions (Articles 51-63) which dealt with the transitional amendment of the Constitution, the transition and reconstitution of the Parliament and Government, the continuance of the Civil Service, the entry upon office of the first President,the temporary continuance of the Courts, the continuance of Attorney General, Comptroller and Auditor General, Defence and Police Forces; coming into force of the Constitution and the text of the Constitution, ceased to have any legal effect on the third anniversary of the inauguration of the first President (Douglas Hyde, 1938) and have been ommitted from all official texts since 1941.

The Bunreacht's Main Innovations

'Myths' about the Bunreacht

Some myths, however, have surrounded the text.

Catholicism

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred,
We, the people of Éire,
Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial,
Gratefully remembering their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our Nation,
And seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations,
Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution.

Northern Ireland

A republic

Women

Constitutional amendments since 1937

The constitution has undergone a significant number of amendments since its passage in 1937, all enacted by referendum.

Transitory Provisions amendments

Rejected proposed amendments

National Emergency

The rights in the Articles of the constitution can be superseded by the declaration of a 'National Emergency'. Two such emegencies have existed - an emergency declared in 1940 to cover the threat to national security posed by World War Two and an emergency declared in 1976 to deal with the threat to the security of the state posed by the Provisional IRA

Judicial review

Furthermore, under judicial review, the concepts and meanings of articles have been explored and expanded by the Irish Supreme Court, most notably under the period of Chief Justice Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, who later became President of Ireland. Among the rights ruled to exist implicitly in the constitution's Articles were:

The Constitution is currently being reviewed by the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution. Until recently the committee was chaired by Brian Lenihan, TD of Fianna Fáil.

Though controversial, de Valera's work is widely regarded as one of the world's best constitutions. Whatever about the nature of its contexts, its clear legal language, order, and structure make it a model of how constitutions should be structured. It has often been compared to the 1958 Constitution of the French Fifth Republic, which is generally seen by political scientists as inferior in terms of clarity and structure. De Valera's constitution has been studied worldwide, by everywhere from Nehru's India to Mandela's South Africa. Its office of President of Ireland was one of six studied closely by Australia's Republic Advisory Committee as Australia considered becoming a republic.

Copies of Bunreacht na hÉireann are available from the Irish Government Publications Office in Dublin. Details on the debate about its passage can be found on the Oireachtas Website

See Also

See also Wikipedia entries on President of Ireland, Taoiseach, Dáil Éireann, Seanad Éireann, Áras an Uachtaráin, Eamon de Valera, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour Party, the Irish Free State the Irish Republic, Éire and the Republic of Ireland.

Footnote

The death penalty had already been abolished in statute law decades earlier. The constitutional amendment merely removed (i) mention of its use, and (ii) the President's role in granting a term of life imprisonment in place of the death sentence.

Recommended Reading

Copies of Bunreacht na hÉireann

Copies of Bunreacht na hÉireann are available from the Irish Government Stationary Office, Molesworth St, Dublin 2 or at

The earlier 1922 constitution has not been available in print since the 1980s, but it can be downloaded in Act form as the Irish Free State (Constitution) Act, 1922 from the website of the Attorney-General for Ireland, through the Oireachtas website mentioned above. See also Irish Free State Constitution

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Constitution of Ireland."

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History of Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Early history

What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. The earliest inhabitants--people of a mid-Stone Age culture--arrived about 6000 BC, when the climate had become hospitable following the retreat of the polar icecaps. About 4,000 years later, tribes from southern Europe arrived and established a high Neolithic culture, leaving behind gold ornaments and huge stone monuments for archaeologists. This culture apparently prospered, and the island became more densely populated. The Bronze Age people, who arrived during the next 1,000 years, produced elaborate gold and bronze ornaments and weapons.

The Iron Age arrived abruptly in the fourth century BC with the invasion of the Celts, a tall, energetic people who had spread across Europe and Great Britain in the preceding centuries. The Celts, or Gaels, and their more numerous predecessors divided into five overkingdoms in which, despite constant strife, a rich culture flourished. This pagan society was dominated by druids--priests who served as educators, physicians, poets, diviners, and keepers of the laws and histories. Ireland never became a Roman province but there is some archaeological evidence of Roman presence on the island.

Tradition maintains that in 432 AD, St. Patrick arrived on the island and, in the years that followed, worked to convert the Irish to Christianity. Probably a Celt himself, St. Patrick preserved the tribal and social patterns of the Irish, codifying their laws and changing only those that conflicted with Christian practices. He also introduced the Roman alphabet, which enabled Irish monks to preserve parts of the extensive Celtic oral literature.

The pagan druid tradition collapsed in the face of the spread of the new faith, and Irish scholars excelled in the study of Latin learning and Christian theology in the monasteries that shortly flourished. Missionaries from Ireland to England and the continent spread news of the flowering of learning, and scholars from other nations came to Irish monasteries. The excellence and isolation of these monasteries helped preserve Latin learning during the Dark Ages. The arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells, ornate jewelry, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island.

This golden age of culture was interrupted by 200 years of intermittent warfare with waves of Viking raiders who plundered monasteries and towns.

The Vikings established Dublin (from the gaelic Án Dubh Linn meaning the 'black pool') and other seacoast towns but were eventually defeated by an Irish king named Brian Boru. Although the Irish were subsequently free from foreign invasion for 150 years, interdynastic warfare continued to drain their energies and resources.

English involvement in Ireland

The links between Ireland and England were established due to the complicated political alliances of the period. A national kingdom had gradually coalesced from the hundred or so tribal kingdoms that existed circa 500AD and was disputed between three powerful regional dynasties. After losing the protection of Muirchertach MacLochlainn, a King of Ireland who was killed in 1166, a Leinster dynast named Diarmuid MacMorrough decided to invite a Norman knight to aid him against his local rivals. This invitation to Richard de Clare (known as Strongbow), which also involved the marriage to Strongbow of King Diarmuid's daughter, caused consternation to Henri II, the Frenchman who controlled mass lands in France and who reigned in England though he rarely lived there, as Henry II. To curb Strongbow's power, which he felt threatened his own security, King Henry invaded Ireland. Pope Adrian IV, the only English Pope, granted overlordship, but not the requested absolute ownership, of the island to King Henry. Henry then used the his new Irish lands to solve a family problem; he had divided up his various French and English territories among his sons, but one, Jean (or John) remained without any land, earning the name 'John Landless'. Henry 'awarded' his son his newly conquered territories in Ireland, with the title 'Lord of Ireland'. However by accident, namely the premature death of each of King Henry's older sons, notably King Richard the Lionheart, left his young son, Jean or John, as King John of England also. Thus Ireland fell by accident directly under the English Crown rather than, as Henry had intended, remaining an independent lordship under a minor norman prince.

Initially the Normans controlled much of Ireland, but over time the native Irish regained some territory and outside the Pale, an area of English authority around Dublin, the Norman lords adopted the Irish language and customs, becoming, in a popular Irish historical soundbyte, 'more Irish than the Irish themselves.' Over the following centuries they sided with the indigenous Irish in political and military conflicts with England and generally stayed Catholic after the Reformation.

The Reformation, in which Henry VIII broke English catholicism from Rome, over the pope's refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, fundamentally changed Ireland. As in England, monasteries were suppressed and those Catholic leaders of Church and state who remained loyal to Rome were deposed and executed. While Henry VIII broke english Catholicism from Rome, his son Edward VI of England moved further, breaking with catholicism completely. These changes exacerbated the oppression of the Roman Catholic Irish, and, in the early 17th century, Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the north of Ireland and the counties of Laois (in older spelling Leix) and Offaly. A series of Penal Laws discriminated against all Christian faiths other than the established Church of Ireland. The principal victims of these laws were Roman Catholicism and Presbyterianism. Ireland played a crucial role in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the Roman Catholic King James II/VII (of England and Scotland) was deposed by Parliament and replaced by joint monarchs, James' protestant daughter Queen Mary and her husband, King William of Orange. James and William fought for the English, Scottish and Irish thrones in a series of battles in Ireland, most famously the Battle of the Boyne.

Ireland had been upgraded from a Lordship to a full kingdom under Henry VIII. From the period of the original lordship in the twelfth century onwards, it had retained its own bicameral parliament of a House of Commons and House of Lords, though it was restricted for most of its existence in terms both of membership (Roman Catholics were barred) and powers, notably Poynings Law, whereby no Act could be introduced into the Irish Parliament without the approval of the English Privy Council. By the late eighteenth century, most such restrictions were removed, in part through a campaign led by among others Henry Grattan (hence the Irish parliament came to be known as 'Grattan's Parliament from 1782, when legislative independence was granted, until 1800. That legislative freedom was also known as the Constitution of 1782.) However in 1800, the Irish Parliament passed the Act of Union which in 1801 merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain (itself a merger of England and Scotland in 1707) to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The nineteenth century

Part of the agreement which led to the Act of Union stipulated that the Penal Laws were to be repealed and Catholic Emancipation granted. However King George III blocked emancipation, arguing that to grant it would break his coronation oath to defend the anglican Church. A campaign under lawyer and politician Daniel O'Connell led to the conceding of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, so allowing Catholics to sit in parliament. O'Connell mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the 'Repeal' of the Act of Union.

Ireland underwent major highs and lows economically during the nineteenth century; from economic booms during the Napoleonic Wars and in the late nineteenth century (when it experienced a surge in economic growth unmatched until the Celtic Tiger boom of the 1990s), to severe economic downturns and a series of famines, the latest threatening in 1879. As had occurred over one hundred years earlier, Ireland experienced another Great Famine in the period 1847-51. Part of the problem was the small size of Irish landholdings, a result of excessive family size (due in part to the disappearance of traditional methods of contraception and growing sexual activity outside marital relationships), among the poorer segments of society least able to provide for their children. In particular, both the law and social tradition provided for subdivision of land, all sons inherited equal shared in a farm, meaning that farms became so small that only crop, potatoes, could be grown in sufficient amounts to feed a family. Furthermore many estates, from whom these rented, were poorly run by absentee landlords and in many cases heavily morgaged.

However in the mid 1840s, a potato blight hit the island, leaving vast numbers without food. Unfortunately this coincided with a fashionable economic policy of laissez-faire, which argued against state intervention of any sort, an economic theory which again became popular under leaders like Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s. While enormous sums were raised by private individuals and charities (American Indians sent supplies, while Queen Victoria personally gave the equivalent in modern money of €70,000) British government inaction (or at least inadequate action) led to a problem becoming a catastrophe. While no-one knows how many died (state registration of deaths, even if was possible given the vast numbers dying, did not exist, while the major religion, Catholicism, only just freed from the Penal Laws was poor at keeping records) best calculations suggest somewhere in the region of 500,000 died. One entire class, the cottiers or farm labourers, was wiped out. Mass emigration began, which continued over the decades, increasing as every threatened famine appeared. It is estimated that in the decades following, over one million people emigrated, many to the United States and Canada. Landlords too approached the mass deaths in various ways. Many evicted tenants who could no longer pay their rents. Others arranged for passage on ships for tenants to emigrate. Others stopped taking rents; some indeed went bankrupt trying to save the lives of their starving tenants.

The famine spawned the first mass wave of Irish emigration to the United States. There was also in this period a large amount of emigration to Britain, Canada, and Australia. A decade later, in 1858, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB--also known as the Fenians) was founded as a secret society dedicated to armed rebellion against the British. However support for Irish republicanism was minimal in Ireland in the period; as late as the 1860s, mass meetings of Irish nationalists ended with the singing of 'God Save the Queen' while royal visits drew mass cheering crowds. Most Irish people elected as their MPs Liberals and Conservatives who belonged to the main British political parties. A significant minority also elected unionists, who championed the cause of the maintenance of the Act of Union. A former Tory barrister turned nationalist campaigner, Issac Butt, established a new moderate nationalist movement, the Home Rule League in the 1870s. After his death, under William Shaw and in particular a radical young protestant landowner, Charles Stewart Parnell, turned the Home Rule movement, or the Irish Parliamentary Party as it became known, into a major political force, dominating Irish politics, to the exclusion of the previous Liberal, Conservative and Unionist parties that had existed. Parnell's movement proved to be a broad church, from conservative landowners to the Land League which was campaigning for fundamental reform of Irish landholding, where most farms were held on rental from large aristocratic estates.

A fringe among Home Rulers associated with militant republicanism, particularly Irish-American republicanism. Parnell's movement also campaigned for 'Home Rule', by which they meant that Ireland would govern itself as a region within the United Kingdom, in contrast to O'Connell who wanted complete independence subject to a shared monarch and Crown. Two Home Rule Bills (1886 and 1893) were introduced by Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, but neither became law. The issue divided Ireland, for a significant minority (largely though by no means exclusively based in Ulster), opposed Home Rule, fearing that a Catholic-Nationalist parliament in Dublin would discriminate against them and would also impose tariffs on industry; while most of Ireland was primarily agricultural, six counties in Ulster were the location of heavy industry and would be effected by any tariff barriers imposed.

Two further Home Rule Bills were introduced and passed, in 1914 and 1920. Until 1918 the Irish Parliament Party remained dominant, though it has for part of that time being divided by the O'Shea Divorce Case, when it was revealed that (as many already knew but pretended they hadn't), Parnell, nicknamed the 'Uncrowned King of Ireland' for his popularity, had been living with the wife of one of his fellow MPs for many years and was the father of a number of her children. When the scandal broke, religious nonformists in Britain, who were the backbone of the pro-Irish Liberal Party, forced leader W. E. Gladstone to abandon support for the Irish cause as long as the 'adulturer' Parnell remained in charge. The Party and the country split between pro- and anti-parnellites, who fought each other in elections. (Ireland's current top selling 'Irish Independent' was launched as the 'Daily Independent' during the split as an anti-parnell!)

The twentieth century

The British government's concession of Home Rule in 1914 proved too little too late. It did not deal with the conflicting demands of Irish nationalism and Irish unionism, and was put on hold for the during of the First World War. In 1916, a small band of republican rebels staged an attempted rebellion, called the Easter Rising under Padraig Pearse and James Connolly. Initially their acts were widely condemned in nationalist Ireland, much of which had sons fighting in the British Army at the urging of Irish Parliamentary Leader John Redmond. Indeed major newspapers like the Irish Independent and local authorities openly called for the execution of Pearse and the Rising's leadership. However Britain's handling of the aftermath, and the execution of rebels and others in stages, caused fury. Britain and the Irish media wrongly blamed a small monarchist party called Sinn Féin for the rebellion, even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Rising survivors, notably Eamon de Valera (who contrary to myth did not avoid being executed because he was American, but because firstly he was held in a different prison from the other leaders and so could not be executed immediately, and secondly because of his American citizenship, a technical delay occurred; by the time a decision had been taken to execute him, all executions had been stopped) infiltrated and took over Sinn Féin.

Up to 1917, Sinn Féin under its founder Arthur Griffith had campaigned for a form of repeal championed first by O'Connell, namely that Ireland would become independent as a dual monarchy with Britain, under a shared king. Such a system operated under Austria-Hungary, where the same monarch, Emperor Karl I/King Charles IV reigned (under a different nomenaclature) in both separately. Indeed Griffith in his book 'The Insurrection in Hungary' modelled his ideas on the manner in which Hungary had forced Austria to create a dual monarchy linking both states. Faced with an impending split between its monarchists and republicans, a compromise was brokered at the 1917 Sinn Féin Árd Fheis (party conference) whereby the party would campaign to create a republic, then let the people decide if they wanted a monarchy or republic, subject to the proviso that if they wanted a king, they could not choose someone from Britain's Royal Family. (Pearse during the Rising had suggested having Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany's youngest son, Prince Joachim as King of Ireland).

Throughout 1917 and 1918, Sinn Féin and the Irish Parliamentary Party fought a bitter and rather inconclusive electoral battle; each won some by-elections and lost others. (One of Sinn Féin's most notable 'victories' involved a party member putting a gun up to a count official's head when he tried to announce that Sinn Féin had lost and telling him to count again, an account revealed in a recent publication!) The scales were finally tipped Sinn Féin's way when Britain, which ironically had received vast number of soldiers from Ireland, tried to impose conscription on the island. An infuriated public turned against Britain over this Conscription Crisis. Even the Irish Parliamentary Party was forced to withdraw its MPs from the British Parliament in Westminster. In the December 1918 general election, Sinn Féin won the vast majority of seats; most many were uncontested, which makes it difficult to calculate exactly what support base it really had. A recent academic study, based on by-elections, contested seats and local government votes, suggest Sinn Féin had the support of marginally less than half of all Irish voters; somewhere in the region of 45-48%. Its success was partly the result of a new electoral register containing many new voters, notably women (over 35), the long gap between elections (no election had occurred since 1910) and the decrepit nature of Irish Parliamentary Party's local organisation because of the long gap between elections.

Sinn Féin's new MPs refused to travel to Wesminster and sit in the British House of Commons. Instead they assembled as TDs in the Mansion House in Dublin and called themselves Dáil Éireann (pronounced, 'dawl air-inn' meaning the 'Assembly of Ireland'). They proclaimed an Irish Republic and established a parliamentary system of government, with a prime minister called Priomh Áire or President of Dáil Éireann. In August 1921, this post was upgraded to a head of state, called President of the Republic. From April 1919 to January 1922 Eamon de Valera held these positions. For several years the Irish Republican Army, the paramilitary army of the Irish Republic, engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British Army and a paramilitary unit known as the Black and Tans. Both sides engaged in brutal acts; the Black and Tans deliberately burned entire towns and tortured civilians (King George V became one of their most vocal critics!). The IRA carried out ethnic cleasing of protestant communities in the Munster region, as well as burning historic homes. This clash, for which it appears one third sided with the IRA, one quarter with the British while the vast majority kept their heads down and avoided getting caught in the crossfire (literally), came to be known as the Irish War of Independence or the Anglo-Irish War of 1919 - 1921.

The fourth Home Rule Act, known as the Better Government of Ireland Act, 1920, attempted to partition Ireland into two states, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, with what was hoped to an embyronic all-Ireland parliament, a Council of Ireland joining them. Northern Ireland did come into being. Southern Ireland however remained a figment on paper. Eventually, negotiations took place between delegations from the Irish Republican and British governments to reach some sort of solution. Ireland was to be given a form of dominion status far in excess of what Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party ever sought, modelled on the Dominion of Canada. Northern Ireland was given the right to opt out of the new state, which was to be called the Irish Free State (or Saorstát Éireann, pronounced 'sayer-stawt air-inn'), in which case a Boundary Commission was to be established to work out the final details of the border. The Free State was to consist of the 23 southern counties of Leinster, Munster and Connaught and three counties in Ulster (Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal).The remaining six counties in Ulster (Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone) had become Northern Ireland in 1920 remained part of the United Kingdom.

The Dáil narrowly passed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Under the leadership of Michael Collins and W.T. Cosgrave it set about establishing the Irish Free State, a national, fully re-organised army to replace the haphazard paramilitary IRA and a new police force, the Civil Guard (generally known as Án Garda Siochána, pronounced 'on gar-da sch-awna') which replaced one of Ireland's two police forces, the Royal Irish Constabulary. (The second, the Dublin Metropolitican Police merged some years later with the 'garda'). A significant republican minority refused to accept the will of the Dáil, indeed the right of the Dáil, to accept the Treaty in place of the Irish Republic. While myth suggests that this division was due to partition, in fact all sides expected (wrongly) that the Boundary Commission would so reduce Northern Ireland's size as to make it unviable, so forcing unity with the Irish Free State later). The actual division was over the role of the Crown in the Treaty settlement; in particular an Oath of Allegiance 'to the Irish Free State by law established' which promised fidelity to King George V as part of the Treaty settlement. The civil war (1922-1923), though short was bloody. It cost the lifes of any senior figures, notably Michael Collins. In one notorious act, the anti-treaty IRA boobytrapped the Irish Public Records Office, blowing to pieces one thousand years of Irish state and religious archives. With the public unambiguously siding with the pro-treaty forces, the pro-treaty side won decisively. Both sides carried out brutal acts; the government executed IRA prisoners, including acclaimed author and Treaty signatory Erskine Childers while the anti-treaty IRA murdered TDs and burned yet more historic homes, such as the famous 'Moore Hall' in Mayo, because its owner had become a senator.

In 1932, Eamon de Valera, who had been the nominal leader of the anti-treatyites and who had ditched Sinn Féin in 1926 to found his own Fianna Fáil, became prime minister, known as President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State. He re-wrote the 1922 Irish Free State constitution before introducing his own new Irish constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann (pronounced 'bun-rockt na hair-inn') in 1937, with a new name, Éire replacing the Irish Free State in the text. Ireland was nominally neutral in World War II, through behind the scenes it worked closely with the Allies; the date of the Normandy landings was decided on the basis of translantic weather reports supplied by the Irish. On April 18, 1949 Éire formally became the Republic of Ireland. As a republic, its membership of the British Commonwealth lapsed. It chose not to re-apply, though de Valera in the 1950s and Sean Lemass in the 1960s contemplated rejoining the Commonwealth (though one of Eamon de Valera's grandsons, now a cabinet minister, has again suggested rejoining!); it joined the European European Community, now known as the European Union, in 1973.

Irish governments have sought the peaceful unification of Ireland and in recent decades have cooperated with Britain against terrorist groups such as the Provisional IRA and 'Real IRA' (see Irish Republican Army). Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA refused until the second last decade of the twentieth century to accept the validity of the Republic of Ireland, claiming that its Army Council, not the parliament elected by three million citizens, was the legitimate voice of the people. However, Sinn Féin has changed its policy stance on the existence of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, serving in the parliament of the former and the cabinet of the latter, as part of the Good Friday Agreement, which set up powersharing institutions within Northern Ireland, North-South instructions and links between the states of the IONA (Islands of the North Atlantic), also known geographically as the British Isles (ie, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Republic of Ireland) The Irish state also changed Articles 2 and 3 of Bunreacht na hÉireann to acknowledge both the existence of Northern Ireland and the desire of Irish nationalists for a united Ireland.

Ireland today

Modern Ireland today is dramatically different to the state created in 1922. A country once gripped by poverty and emigration in the mid 20th Century became one of the fastest growing economies in the world, from 1990 on, a phenomenon that was called the Celtic Tiger. A society once heavily dominated by Roman Catholicism has become a liberal democracy, repealing its constitutional ban on divorce and adopting some of the most progressive laws on gay rights in Europe. Both church and state have been hit by scandals. The revelation that one senior Catholic Bishop, Eamon Casey fathered a child by a divorceé caused a major reaction, as did the discovery of child abuse by a large number of clerics, notably the infamous paedophile Father Brendan Smyth. (The incompetent handling of a request for the extradition of the late Fr. Smyth brought down an Irish government in 1994.) Another bishop has since resigned over his mishandling of child abuse cases in his diocese. Meanwhile a series of tribunals is currently inquiring into major allegations of corruption against senior politicians, notably former taoiseach (prime minister) Charles Haughey, who is due to stand trial shortly on issues related to tribunals. Ray Burke, who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1997, has been definitely described as 'corrupt' by a judge in a recent tribunal report.

The scale of the change in Ireland is personfied in its leaders. Leaders like Daniel O'Connell, Eamon de Valera and W.T. Cosgrave all espoused a form of traditional gaelic catholic nationalism. Today's symbols are figures like Mary Robinson, a radical feminist senator who became President of Ireland (1990-97), her successor as president, Mary McAleese, former advisor to the Catholic bishops and one of the founders of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, Bob Geldof, a one-time controversial rock singer turned international humanitarian and founder of Live Aid, or world renouned Irish rock band, U2, whose lead singer, Bono, worked closely with figures like Pope John Paul II and the United States Secretary for the Treasury on the Jubilee 2000 campaign on third world debt reduction. Modern Ireland thinks nothing of public visits by British royalty, something unheard of before the 1990s, of amending its constitution as part of the Belfast Agreement to accept both the existence of Northern Ireland and the nationalist desire for Irish unity, of having a prime minister, Bertie Ahern whose marriage has broken up, living openly in a non-marital relationship with a new partner. The old image of Ireland, as a conservative catholic society is no longer an accurate reflection of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

External link

Further reading

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History of the Republic of Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The island of Ireland is located off mainland Europe to the west and is part of a group of islands which used to be known as the British Isles but since the Irish Republic gained its independence in 1922, the term Britain and Ireland has come into use and is more acceptable in the Republic. The island is divided into two separate political entities, originally created in the 1920s. Covering three-quarters of the island, and containing twenty-six counties, the southern state officially became Republic of Ireland in 1949 some time after it became independent from the UK in 1922. The remaining six-county state covering the north-east corner of the island is called Northern Ireland and is part of the United Kingdom.

(In this article 'Ireland', unless otherwise stated, refers to the Republic of Ireland.)

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

From 1 January 1801 until 6 December 1922 Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Historically it had for centuries been governed as one all-island unit. This changed with the introduction of partition in the British Government of Ireland Act, 1920. This created two states, Southern Ireland (of 26 counties) and Northern Ireland (of 6 counties), both of which were to remain part of the United Kingdom. While Northern Ireland became a political reality, Southern Ireland initially existed only on paper, its governing institutions never having come into being.

From 1919 to 1922 a UDI all-island state called the Irish Republic nominally existed, having been declared by the First Dáil, an illegal 'Assembly of Ireland' set up by Irish politicians who had been elected to sit in the British House of Commons but who had declined to do so, setting up a rival parliament instead. Though unrecognised internationally, the Irish Republic functioned in a haphazard manner as a rival government with its own prime minister (later upgraded to become President of the Republic) and a cabinet. Its army, the Irish Republican Army, waged a guerrilla war against the British Army and police force, in what came to be known as the Anglo-Irish War (also known as the Irish War of Independence).

Anglo-Irish Treaty

In December 1921, the British Government and Irish Republican plenipotentiaries negotiated a peace treaty, known as the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It created a whole new system of Irish self government, known as dominion status, with a new state, to be called the Irish Free State (in the Irish language Saorstát Éireann). The new Free State was in theory to cover the entire island, subject to the provisio that Northern Ireland could opt out and choose to remain part of the United Kingdom, which it duly did. For one year, Southern Ireland, which had previously existed only on paper, was resurrected and governed by a cabinet under Michael Collins. (After his assassination in August 1922 W.T. Cosgrave assumed control.) The Irish Republic in theory continued to exist, with both Southern Ireland and Irish Republic disappearing similtaneously and being replaced by the new Irish Free State on 6 December 1922. In the absence of the six counties of Northern Ireland, the new state, which was independent of the United Kingdom, covered twenty-six of the island's thirty-two counties.

The Irish Free State (1922-1937)

The Irish Free State was a constitutional monarchy over which the British monarch reigned (from 1927 with the title King of Ireland). The Representative of the Crown was known as the Governor-General of the Irish Free State. It had a bicameral parliament and a cabinet, called the Executive Council answerable to the Chamber of Deputies, which was known as Dáil Éireann. The prime minister of the Free State was called the President of the Executive Council. The constitution was called the Irish Free State Constitution.

Éire

On the 29 December 1937 a new constitution came into being. It replaced the Irish Free State by a new state called Éire. The Governor-General was replaced by a President of Ireland. A new more powerful prime minister, called the Taoiseach came into being, while the Executive Council was renamed the Government. Though it had a president, the new state was not a republic. The British monarch continued to reign as King of Ireland and was used as an "organ" in international and diplomatic relations, with the President of Ireland relegated to symbolic functions within the state but never outside it.

The Republic of Ireland (1949- )

On 1 April 1949, the Republic of Ireland Act, came into force. The new state was unambiguously described as a republic, with the international and diplomatic functions previously vested in or exercised by the King now vested in the President of Ireland who finally became unambiguously the Irish head of state. Though the official name of the state remained Éire, the term Republic of Ireland though officially just the description of the new state, came to be used as its name. While the Republic often chose to use the word Ireland to describe itself, particularly in the diplomatic sphere, many states avoid using that term because of the existence of a second Ireland, Northern Ireland, and because the 1937 constitution claimed that the south had jurisdiction over the north. Using the word 'Ireland' was taken as accepting that claim and so caused offence in Northern Ireland. That claim, in what was known as Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 constitution, was repealed in 1999.

The Irish Free State/Éire remained a member of the British Commonwealth until the declaration of a republic in April 1949. Under Commonwealth rules, declaration of a republic automatically terminates membership of the Commonweath. Unlike India, which became a republic at the same time, the Republic of Ireland chose not to reapply for admittance to the Commonweath.

Ireland has been a member of the European Economic Community (EEC, now known as the European Union) since 1973.

For more on Irish history, see the History of Ireland page.

See Also

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Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Island of Ireland is the second-largest island in Europe. It lies on the west side of the Irish Sea, across from Great Britain.

The island of Ireland, named Hibernia by the Romans, is 485km (301 miles) from North to South and 275km (171 miles) from East to West. Central lowlands are framed by hillier areas. The River Shannon, which runs from North-East to South-West, is the longest river, and there are a large number of lakes, of which Lough Neagh is probably the most famous. For more detailed information see: Geography of Ireland.

Politically, the island of Ireland is currently divided into:

The island is often said to be part of the British Isles. However, many people, especially those from the Republic, take exception to this name, which seems to suggest the whole island belongs to Britain. For this reason, the term Islands of the North Atlantic (IONA) is sometimes used as a more neutral alternative.

The division of the island into "Northern" and "Republic" is a relatively recent development, only coming about in 1920. The island itself has been inhabited for about 9,000 years. The Irish language, Gaelic (commonly referred to as 'Irish' by the people of Ireland), arrived with the Celts in the last centuries BC. Almost nothing is known of the languages spoken before. In the 5th century, the country was converted to Christianity with Saint Patrick being central in this effort according to tradition. It subsequently became a centre of Christian scholarship. This was brought largely to an end, however, with the invasion of the Vikings in the 10th century and the Normans in the 12th century.

In 1172, King Henry II of England gained Irish lands, and from the 13th century, English law began to be introduced. English rule was largely limited to the area around Dublin known as the Pale initially, but this began to expand in the 16th century with the final collapse of the Gaelic social and political superstructure at the end of the 17th century. From that time, English (more accurately British) influence and expansion grew, and with it spread the English language. Over time there grew a movement to shake off British rule, and for Ireland to become independent. See history of Ireland for more details.

More recently, the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998 has brought a degree of powersharing to Northern Ireland, giving both unionists, who favour it remaining a part of the United Kingdom, and nationalists, who favour it becoming part of the Irish state a hand in running its affairs. However, the power conferred by the agreement is limited, and the agreement has come close to breaking down on a number of occasions. The political future of Northern Ireland remains unclear.

In a limited number of areas, the island operates as a single entity. The Irish rugby team, for instance, includes players from the north and the south, and the Irish Rugby Football Union governs the sport on both sides of the divide. Gaelic football is, arguably, the most popular form of football and is played and organised on an All-Ireland basis. Once largely confined to one side of the divide, in recent years counties from Northern Ireland have had success. In 2002 and 2003, Armagh and Tyrone respectively won the coveted Gaelic football All-Ireland title, with both teams meeting in the 2003 final. Hurling, a kin of field hockey, is another popular traditional Irish sport, with teams from all 32 counties north and south competing. However, successes in this sport largely are confined to southern teams. Both these sports are governed by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), with its headquarters at Dublin's Croke Park, a magnificent 80,000 seater stadium at which both All-Ireland finals are played. Many matches in the final stages of the campaign (i.e. Quarter-finals, Semi-Finals etc.) are competed here. Boxing is also an All-Ireland sport governed by the I.A.B.A. The major religions, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, are organised on an all-island basis. However soccer is organised within each state, with the (Northern) Irish Football Association and the (Southern) Football Association of Ireland. Some trades unions are also organised on an all-Irish basis and associated with the Irish Congress of Trades Unions (ICTU) in Dublin, while others in Northern Ireland are affiliated with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the United Kingdom.

The island also has a shared culture across the divide in many other ways. Traditional Irish music, for example, though showing some variance in all geographical areas, is broadly speaking the same on both sides of the divide.

Ireland is a full member of the European Union since January 1, 1973. Both the Republic of Ireland itself and Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom joined simultaneously. The Republic of Ireland is also a member of the European Econonomic and Monetary Union. As such, the Irish Pound was replaced by the Euro as the official currency on the 1st of January, 2002.

Other Wikipedia Articles

Footnotes

1 The term Ulster is often used by many unionists. The terms North of Ireland or Six Counties are used by many nationalists and republicans. Each community usually takes offence at the other's term. Northern Ireland is the official name and the one used most widely across the communities.

simple:Ireland

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Ireland."

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Irish Free State

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Irish Free State (1922-1937)
Saorstát Éireann
(In Detail)
National motto: None
Official languages Irish and English
Capital Dublin
Head of StateKing of Ireland
George V (1922-36)
Edward VIII (Jan-Dec 1936)
George VI (1936-37)
Native Governor-GeneralTim Healy (1922-27)
James McNeill (1927-1932)
Domhnall Ua Buachalla (1932-1936)
December 1936: Office abolished
Head of Government President of the Executive Council
W.T. Cosgrave (1922-1932)
Eamon de Valera (1932-37)
National ParliamentOireachtas Éireann
made up of King & two Houses, Dáil Éireann (Chamber of Deputies) and Seanad Éireann (Senate).
State religionnone. State prohibited from endowing any religion in constitution
National anthem God Save the King until 1927
Amhrán na bhFiann officially adopted then, though previously used unofficially.
Currency Pound (Irish pound was linked to the pound sterling, though from the mid 1920s IFS produced its own notes and coins
Dates of State's Existence6 December 1922 to 29 December 1937
Replaced byÉire, known since 1949 as the Republic of Ireland
The Irish Free State (in Irish, Saorstát Éireann) was (1922-1937) the name of the state comprising the 26 of Ireland's 32 counties which were separated from the United Kingdom under the Irish Free State Agreement (or Anglo-Irish Treaty) signed by British and Irish Republic representatives in London on December 6, 1921. The Irish Free State came into being in December 1922, replacing two co-existing but nominally rival states, the de jure Southern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act,1920 and which from January 1922 had been governed by a Provisional Government under Michael Collins and the de facto Irish Republic under the President of Dáil Éireann, Arthur Griffith, which had been created by Dáil Éireann in 1919. (In August 1922, both states in effect merged with the deaths of their leaders; both posts came to be held simultaneously by W.T. Cosgrave.)

The Historic Background

In 1918 the majority of Irish seats in the Westminster parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland were won (mainly without contests) by Sinn Féin, a previously monarchist party that under Eamon de Valera's leadership from 1917 had campaigned for an Irish republic. In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs (or TDs as they became known in gaelic) assembled in Dublin and formed a single chamber Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann (Assembly of Ireland). It affirmed the creation of an Irish Republic and passed a Declaration of Independence. However no international state recognised the validity of the Irish Republic, nor was it accepted by the overwhelming mass of Irish people. (Recent calculations of Sinn Féin support in 1918, based on actual electoral battles at national and local level puts party support at in the region of 45-48%, less than a majority!) The Irish War of Independence was fought between the army of the Republic, the Irish Republican Army (known to distinguish from later claimants to the title as the 'Old IRA') and the British Army. In 1921, a truce was declared between both sides. At the end of that year, two negotiating teams, under British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Arthur Griffith, who headed the Irish Republic's delegation.

In reality that these negotiations would produce a form of Irish government short of the independence theorised by republicans was not in doubt. For Britain could not offer a republican form of government without risking demands for something similar throughout the Empire. Furthermore, as one of the negotiators Michael Collins later admitted (and he was in a position to know, given his role in the independence war), the IRA at the point of the Truce was weeks if not days from collapse, with falling morale and a chronic shortage of bullets. "Frankly, we thought they were mad", Collins said of the sudden British offer of a Truce. The President of the Republic. Eamon de Valera, himself realised that a republic was not on offer. He decided not to be a part of the Treaty delegation and so be tainted with what some more militant republicans were guaranteed to call a 'sell out'.

The Treaty as expected explicitly ruled out republican status. What it offered was dominion status, as a state of the British Commonwealth (now called the Commonwealth of Nations), equal to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Though less than expected by the Sinn Féin leadership of 1919-22, it was substantially more than the form of home rule within the United Kingdom sought by Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish nationalist leaders in the period from the 1880s to 1918.

The Governmental & Constitutional Structures of the Irish Free State

The structures of the new Free State were laid out in the Treaty and in the Irish Free State Constitution Act. It provided for a constitutional monarchy, with a three tier parliament, called the Oireachtas, made up of the King and two houses, Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann (the Irish Senate). Executive authority was vested in the King, and exercised by a ministry called the 'Executive Council', presided over by a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council.

The Representative of the Crown

The King in Ireland was represented by a Governor-General of the Irish Free State, The office replaced the previous Lord Lieutenant, who had headed English and British administrations in Ireland since the Middle Ages.

The Oath of Allegiance

As with all dominions, provision was made for an Oath of Allegiance. Within dominions, such oaths were taken by parliamentarians personally towards the monarch. The Irish Oath of Allegiance was fundamentally different. It had two elements; the first, a oath to the Free State, as by law established, the second part a promise of fidelity, to His Majesty, King George V, his heirs and successors. That second fidelity element, however, was qualified in two ways. It was to the King in Ireland, not specifically to the British King. Secondly, it was to the King explicitly in his role as part of the Treaty settlement, not in terms of pre-1922 British rule. The Oath itself came from a combination of three sources, and was largely the work of Michael Collins in the Treaty negotiations. It came in part from a draft oath suggested prior to the negotiations by President de Valera. Other sections was taken by Collins directly from the Oath of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, of which he was the secret head. In its structure, it was also partially based on the form and structure used in the dominion of Canada.

Though controversially moderate by other dominion standards, and notably indirect in its reference to the monarchy (and hence widely criticised by unionists and other dominions), it was criticised by nationalists and republicans for making any reference to the Crown, the claim being that it was a direct oath to the Crown, a fact demonstably incorrect by an examination of its wording. But in 1922 Ireland and beyond, it was the perception, not the reality, that influenced public debate on the issue. Had its original author, Michael Collins, survived, he might have been able to clarify its actual meaning, but with his assassination in 1922, no major negotiator to the Oath's creation on the Irish side was still alive, available or pro-Treaty. (The leader of the Irish delegation, Arthur Griffith had died also in August 1922). The Oath became a key issue in the resulting Irish Civil War that divided the pro- and anti-treaty sides in 1922-23.

Northern Ireland

The Treaty provided for an all-Ireland thirty-two county state, subject to the proviso that the six Northern Ireland counties, which had their own government under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920 could formally opt out of the Free State, which they duly did. (Had it remained, Northern Ireland would have been a self-governing province of the Irish Free State, with its own parliament and government as before.) Northern Ireland thus remained part of the renamed United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Treaty also allowed Britain to retain naval use of four Free State ports.

The Irish Civil War

The compromise contained in the agreement contributed to the civil war in the 26 counties in June 1922-April 1923, in which the "Free Staters" defeated the anti-Treaty Republicans nominally led by Eamon de Valera, who had resigned as president of the Republic on its ratification, to the fury of some of his own supporters, notably Sean T. O'Kelly. On resigning, he then sought re-election in an attempt to wreck the treaty. However his ploy failed and Arthur Griffith became President. Michael Collins was chosen by the House of Commons of Southern Ireland (a body set up under the Government of Ireland Act and to which the Provisional Government was nominally answerable to) to become Provisional Prime Minister. As both the House of Commons and the Dáil had almost identical members, it became increasingly difficult to work out which body was meeting. In reality, both Griffith's republican administration and Collins' Crown-appointed government merged with the deaths of both men, their respective offices being held by the same man, W.T. Cosgrave.

The Irish Free State in Reality

Governance

Two political Parties governed the Irish Free State between 1922 and 1937.

Constitutional Evolution

Michael Collins described the Treaty as 'the freedom to achieve freedom'. In practice, the Treaty offered most of symbols, powers and functions of independence, including a functioning parliamentary democracy, executive, judiciary, a written constitution which could be changed by the Free State, etc. However in theory, a number of limits existed;

All this changed in the 1920s. A reform of the King's title, under a Commonwealth Conference decision, changed the King's role in each dominion. No more was he King in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Instead he became King of Ireland, Australia, etc. So from that change, embodied in the Royal Titles Act, the British king had no role whatsoever in each dominion. His only role was as each dominion's own king, advised in each dominion's affairs by the dominion, not by Britain. Furthermore, the British government lost any role in either the selection of a governor-general or in advising him. So Britain lost the ability to influence internal dominion legislation.

The Free State went further. It 'accepted' credentials from international ambassadors to Ireland, something no other dominion up to then had done. It registered the treaty with the League of Nations as an international document, to the fury of Britain who saw it as a mere internal document between a dominion and Britain. Most dramatically of all. the Statute of Westminster, again embodying a decision of a Commonwealth Conference, enabled each dominion to enact any legislation to change any legislation, without any role for the British parliament which may have enacted the original legislation in the past. Ireland symbolically marked these changes in two mould-breaking moves.

As a result, if Collins in 1921 described the Treaty as the 'freedom to achieve freedom', all the changes, the last being the awarding of the Irish Great Seal (the first in Commonwealth history), Ireland had fully achieved de jure independence exactly ten years after the Treaty that promised it. When Eamon de Valera became President of the Executive Council (prime minister) in 1932 he described Cosgrave's ministers' achievements simply. Having read the files, he told his son, Vivion, "they were magnificent, son." (All that remained was British control of a number of ports in the Irish Free State, called the Treaty Ports. However that was an issue not of constitutional law but technical requirements in the Treaty which could and were renegotiated in 1938 to Ireland's satisfaction.)

That freedom allowed de Valera, on becoming President of the Executive Council (February 1932) to go even further. With no British restrictions on his policies, he abolished the Oath of Allegiance, (which Cosgrave intended to do had he won the 1932 general election) the Senate, university representation in the Dáil, appeals to the Privy Council. His one major cock-up occurred in 1936 when in a rush to use the abdication of King Edward VIII, he tried to abolish the crown and governor-general with the Constitution (Amendment No.27 Act), only to be told by senior law officers and others that, as the crown & governor-generalship existed separate from the constitution in a vast number of Acts, Charters, Orders-in-Council, Letters Patent, they both still existed. He had to rush through a second Bill, The Executive Powers (Consequential Provisions) Act, 1937 to repeal all the bits he'd forgotten! (He retrospectively dated the second Act's effect back to December 1936!)

The Aftermath of the Irish Free State

In 1937, Eamon de Valera replaced the 1922 constitution of Michael Collins with his own, renamed the Irish Free State Éire, and created a new 'president of Ireland' in place of the Governor-General of the Irish Free State. His constitution, reflecting the 1930s preoccupation with faith and fatherland, in Articles 2 challenged in theory the partition of Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act, while in Article 3, accepted the reality of partition. It also provided for a special position for the Roman Catholic Church, while also recognising the existence and rights of other faiths, specifically the minority anglican Church of Ireland and the Jewish Congregation in Ireland. (These articles were all repealed, the latter in 1972, the former in 1999.)

It was left to de Valera's successors in government (1948) to achieve the country's formal transformation into the Republic of Ireland. A tiny minority of Irish people, usually attached to small parties like Sinn Féin and Republican Sinn Féin. denied the right of the twenty-six country state to use the name 'republic', continually referring to the twenty-six county state as the 'Free State', its citizens 'Free Staters' and its government the "Free State" or "Dublin" Government. though with Sinn Féin's entry in the Republic's Dáil (where they won 5 seats out of 166 in the 2002 general election) and the Northern Ireland Executive (where they have 2 ministers), the odds are that the numbers of those who have refused to accept the legitimacy of the Irish Free State/Éire/Republic of Ireland (already minuscule), will decline further.

Additional Reading

According to Irish Constitutional Theory

1>
Preceded by:
Irish Republic
(declared by Dáil Éireann in 1919) 		Irish States (1171-present) Succeeded by:
Éire

According to British Constitutional Theory

1>
Preceded by:
United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland 		Irish States (1171-present) Succeeded by:
Éire

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Irish Free State."

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Irish potato famine

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Irish Potato Famine, also called The Great Famine or The Great Hunger (in Irish, An Gorta Mór, pronounced on gore-ta more), is the name given to a famine which struck Ireland between 1846 and 1849 (though its after-affects continued until 1851). Perhaps 500,000 Irish died and millions emigrated (see Irish diaspora). While its immediate impact on Ireland was considerable, its long-term impact proved immense, in terms of changing land-holding structures, sexual and marriage patterns and emigration.

The Irish Potato Famine was a social, biological, political and economic event, which had both local and international causes, and local and international effects. The first half of this article focuses on the political and economic dimensions of the famine, first by discussing the relationship between Ireland and Great Britain, and then by discussing land tenure within Ireland. The second half of this article focuses on the agricultural and demographic dimensions of the famine, first by discussing the place of the potato in the Irish farm economy, and then by discussing the blight itself.

Ireland and Great Britain

The 1801 Act of Union stipulated that Ireland would have in the United Kingdom one-fifth the representation of Great Britain, that is 100 members in the House of Commons. Ireland was in terms of population over-represented. The trouble was not Irish representation in the British parliament but that the UK parliament, by definition, was less in tune with the needs of Ireland, given that the vast majority of the non-Irish MPs and ministers had never set foot in Ireland. The union of the churches of England and Ireland also cemented British rule, strengthening the preeminent position in Ireland of the Anglicans by securing the continuation of the British Test Act, which virtually excluded nonconformists (both Catholic and Protestant) from Parliament and from membership of municipal corporations.

Part of the agreement that led to the Union Act stipulated that the Penal Laws were to be repealed and Catholic Emancipation granted. King George III, however, blocked emancipation, arguing that to grant it would break his coronation oath to defend the Anglican Church. A campaign under lawyer and politician Daniel O'Connell led to the conceding of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, so allowing Catholics to sit in parliament. O'Connell mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the “Repeal” of the Act of Union.

Not until 1828-29 did the repeal of the Test Act and the concession of Catholic Emancipation provide political equality for most purpose, including free trade between the British Isles that Irish merchandise would be admitted to British colonies on the same terms as British merchandise.

The impact of laissez-faire economics

Political equality and laissez-faire were mixed blessings though. These advantages were not enough to offset the full impact of Britain's Industrial Revolution. The time of the Potato Famine coincided with the era of Pax Britannica between the Congress of Vienna (after the defeat of Napoleon) and the Franco-Prussian War. Britain then reaped the benefits of being the world's sole modern, industrial nation. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Britain was the "workshop of the world", meaning that its finished goods were produced so efficiently and cheaply that they could usually undersell comparable, locally manufactured goods in other markets.

Within half a century agricultural produce dropped in value, estate rentals declined, while the rural population increased substantially. When harvests of potato, the staple food of rural Ireland, were devastated through the onset of blight in the mid-1840s, thousands died of starvation of fever in the Great Famine that ensued, and thousands more fled abroad. British food relief can be summarized as too little, too late; some blame the economic policy of laissez-faire, which argued against state intervention, while other look towards government inefficiencies and lack of transportation. While no one knows how many died (state registration of deaths, even if was possible given the vast numbers dying, did not exist, while the major religion, Catholicism, only just freed from the Penal Laws was poor at keeping records) best calculations suggest somewhere in the region of 500,000 died. One entire class, the cottiers, or farm laborers, was wiped out.

Part of the problem was also the small size of Irish landholdings, a result of excessive family size (due in part to the disappearance of traditional methods of contraception and growing sexual activity outside marital relationships), among the poorer segments of society least able to provide for their children. In particular, both the law and social tradition provided for subdivision of land, all sons inherited equal shared in a farm, meaning that farms became so small that only crop, potatoes, could be grown in sufficient amounts to feed a family. Furthermore many estates, from whom these rented, were poorly run by absentee landlords and in many cases heavily mortgaged.

Suggestions of genocide

That the Famine "amounted to genocide" by the British against the Irish, is a divisive issue, and largely representative of the difference in perspective and attitudes among the Irish-Americans from Irish nationals. Few Irish historians accept outright such a definition, as "genocide" implies a deliberate policy of extermination. All are agreed that the British policies during the Famine, particularly those applied under Lord John Russell, were misguided, ill-informed and disastrous. Professor Joe Lee once called what happened a holocaust.

There is little or no conflict on the facts; the records are incomplete, for whatever cause, and thus the "debate" is largely a moral one; attempting to ascertain, whether within the policies of the British Empire, lay a racist, forgetful, or simply inconsiderate mentality that, despite its power, was impotent to handle a humanitarian crisis in its own backyard.

Irish, British and American historians F.S.L. Lyons, John A. Murphy, Joe Lee, Roy Foster, and James S. Donnelly, Jr., as well as historians Cecil Woodham-Smith, Peter Gray, Ruth Dudley Edwards and many others have long dismissed claims of a deliberate policy of genocide. This dismissal usually does not preclude any assessment of British Imperial rule as inadequate, or ill-mannered to handle the task.

Irish Landholdings

The catastrophe that was the Famine was the product of a number of complex problems with affected nineteenth century Ireland. One of the most central was the nature of land-holdings. From the middle ages onwards, Irish ownership of the land of the island had been in decline, as waves of settlers, from the Elizabethan plantations on, assumed control of large tracts of land. A practice of consolidation of lands into large estates was widespread in Europe, but in Ireland it was complicated by the discriminatory laws applied to all faiths other than the established Church of Ireland, but which most directly affected Irish Roman Catholics, by far the largest religion on the Island, and the religion of the overwhelming majority of Irish people. Under the Penal Laws, Irish catholics faced the threat of confiscation of property. While the enforcement of the law fluctuated both in terms of period and geography, and by the time of the Famine the laws had in any case been repealed, the cultural impact of the discrimination they embodied helped shape Irish attitudes towards land. As a result of all of this, by the time of the Famine most Irish catholics were restricted to holding small, frequently impoverished tenancies, lacking what came to be known as the 'Three 'Fs'; fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale.

This was further complicated by a cultural tradition known as 'sub-division', whereby lands and property, instead of being inherited by the older or oldest son (primogeniture) was divided equally among male heirs, both legitimate and on occasion illegitimate. (This tradition, which had existed to pre-Norman times, covered not merely land inheritance, but even inheritance of Irish kingships, where Irish monarchs and chieftains were not succeeded by their oldest son but by a family member elected by and from five generations of family members.) In its nineteenth centuryland-holding form, it meant that, over each generation, the size of a tenant farm was reduced, as it was split between all living sons, though by the 1840s, sub-division was increasingly only found among the poorest people on the smallest farms. In 1845, for example, 24% of all Irish tenant farms were of 0.4 to 2 hectares (one to five acres) in size, while 40% were of 2 to 6 hectares (five to fifteen acres). This included marshland and bogland that could not be used for food production. As a result, holdings were so small that the only crop that could be grown in sufficient quantities, and which provided sufficient nourishment to feed a family, was potatoes. A British Government report carried out shortly before the Famine noted that the scale of the poverty was such that one third of all small holdings in Ireland were presumed to be unable to support their families, after paying their rent, other than through the earnings of seasonal migrant labour in England and Scotland. [1]

As a result, the Irish landholding system in the 1840s was already in serious problems. Many of the big estates, as a result of earlier agricultural crises, were heavily mortgaged and in financial difficulty. (10% were eventually bankrupted by the Famine.) Below that level were mass tenancies, lacking proper rent control and security of tenure, many of them through sub-division so small that the tenants were struggling to survive in good years, and almost wholly dependent on potatoes because they alone could be grown in sufficient quantity and nutritional value. Furthermore, efforts of tenants to increase the productivity of their land was actively discouraged by the threat that any increase in land value would lead to a disproportionately high resulting increase in rents, possibly leading to their eviction.

The Potato in Ireland

The potato contains considerable food energy, and yet is very easy to cultivate. Typical farming practice of the era seeded a field once after being hoed, and future years' crops were "seeded" by simply leaving some of the potatoes unharvested in the ground. Weeding was minimal, and irrigation unnecessary. The potato had become Ireland's major food crop after being introduced sometime around 1650, though its dominance was not achieved until around the 1780s. Even small plots could provide enough calories for a family (and also to feed pigs, providing access to meat, while they could also be sold, providing extra income.) Other lands were used for cash crops like flax. The abundance of food and cash led to a rise in population in Ireland.

The potato's benefits also led to a dangerous inflexibility in the Irish food system. The majority of calories were being provided from a single crop. That alone is not unusual, and is still the case today for many subsistence farmers around the world. However the traditional Irish practice of sub-dividing plots among the male children of a family, though reducing was still widely practiced in the poorer areas of the country. The use of the potato and sub-division produced two interlinked side-effects; with increased calories the number of surviving male heirs was quickly increasing, while with the prospect of inheriting a land-holding, young heirs married young, producing large families, hence more subdivision.

The Blight

Although the origins are still unclear, in 1845 a potato blight struck across Europe, turning potatoes into a black, soggy, and inedible mess. The Freeman's Journal (the main nationalist newspaper) on June 27 1846 carried a headline Disease in the New Potato Crop, recounting an early outbreak in County Mayo. By Black '47, the vast majority of that year's crop was ruined. Food stores and emergency supplies made up for some of this setback, but the blight appeared again in 1849, and there were no reserve capacity remaining. The result was widespread famine, though it affected different parts of the island to different degrees.

No-one knows for certain how many people died in the Famine. State registration of births, marriages or deaths had not yet begun, while the Roman Catholic Church's records, where they exist at all, are incomplete, understandably given the sheer scale of deaths. Many of the Church of Ireland's records (which included records of local catholics, who paid Tithes (local taxes) to the local Church of Ireland), were destroyed when the IRA blew up the Irish Public Records Office in 1922 (an act virtually universally condemned as pointless).

One possible estimate has been reached by comparing the expected population with the eventual numbers in the 1850s. Earlier predictions expected that by 1851, Ireland would have a population of 8 to 9 million. This calculation is based on numbers contained in the ten year census results compiled since 1821. However a recent re-examination of those returns raise questions as to their accuracy; the 1841 Census, for example, incorrectly classed farm children as labourers, affecting later calculations on how many adults capable of child-bearing existed to produce children between 1841 and 1851!). What we do know is that in 1851 the actual population was 6.6 million. Making straight-forward calculations is complicated by a secondary impact of famine, a key side-effect of malnutrition, namely plummeting fertility and sexual activity rates. The scale of that impact on population numbers was not fully recognised until studies done during African famines in the twentieth century. As a result, corrections based on inaccuracies in census returns and on the previous unrealised decline in births due to malnourishment have led to an overall reduction in the presumed death numbers. Modern historians and statisticians reckon that between 500,000 and one million died. Most historians suggest the death-toll was in the region of 700,000 to 800,000.[2] In addition, in excess of 1 million Irish emigrated in notorious coffin ships to the United States, Great Britain, Canada and further afield, while more than one million emigrated over following decades; by 1911, a combination of emigration and an abnormally high number of unmarried men and women in the population, had reduced the population of Ireland to 4.4 million.

The initial British government response towards the early famine was, in the view of many historians such as F.S.L. Lyons 'prompt and relatively successful'.[3] Furthermore, contrary to myth, as Professor Joe Lee observed:

there was nothing unique, by the standards of pre-industrial subsistence crisis, about the [Irish] famine. The death rate had been frequently equalled in earlier European famines, including, possibly, in Ireland itself during the famine of 1740-41.[4]

In the case of the 1846-49 Irish Famine, with tragic consequences the Tory government of Sir Robert Peel (who had served in the Dublin Castle British administration, having begun his political career as an MP for a rotten borough of Cashel, County Tipperary and so had some understanding of Ireland) was replaced (with the help of Irish MPs under Daniel O'Connell) by a Whig ministry under Lord John Russell Russell believed in a laissez faire economic policy of non-intervention in the economy. So whereas Peel had imported Indian Maize to feed the starving, Russell instead focused on providing support through public works and work-houses. A disastrous Gregory Clause of the Poor Law Extension Act was introduced, limiting aid to those who owned less than one quarter of an acre of land. This forced poverty-stricken starving tenants either to give up their homes and land, and so become destitute after the famine, or hold on to them and risk starvation.

Evictions

In a final disastrous twist, local relief was paid for through the Poor Law Union, which was funded by rates (local taxes) paid by landlords, on the basis of an estate's tenant numbers. This produced the sick farce of increasing local reliance on the poor law leading landlords to evict impoverished tenants in order to control their rapidly rising rates bills, only to see those evictees, now reliant on the Poor Law Union pushing up rate bills further, leading to more evictions. But if they kept on tenants unable to pay rents, they then might be unable to meet their rates bill (many estates were already in financial trouble), meaning the Poor Law would not be able to offer local relief, leading to more starvation. [5] Only central funding of Poor Law Unions from the exchequer could solve this conundrum, but Russell's government was in principle opposed to this because as 'state involvement' it ran against the principles of laissez faire. Some landlords to avoid ex-tenants relying on the Poor Law, provided passage to other countries, on what became known as coffin ships. All too many emigrants, already weak, some with cholera, died during the passage to America.

Ireland experienced a massive number of evictions, due to the absence of the three Fs, specifically rent control and security of tenure. Some landlords evicted for financial reasons, others infamously to 'clear' their lands to allow cattle grazing. Some evicted reluctantly because of their climbing rates bills, others with notorious brutality to make money from the Famine. 90,000 people were evicted in 1849 alone, though up to one third were allowed to return as 'caretakers'. 109,000 were evicted in 1850. [6] Many estates did however provide help for their tenants, with reduced rents and the provision of soup kitchens, in some cases bankrupting themselves in the process. (10% of all states were bankrupt by 1850) The failure of Britain to control the behaviour of landlords has often been criticised. However in the mid-nineteenth century, few states internationally restricted the rights of landlords; restrictions in Ireland were only imposed from the 1870s, as under the Land Acts which conceded the Irish nationalist demand for the Three Fs and which finally allowed tenants to buy their farms.

From 1846 a disastrous application of the laissez faire economic theory and ignorance in London of the scale of the problem, coupled with the lack of the 'Three Fs' to protect tenants, turned a crisis into a catastrophe. Large sums of money were donated by charities; Pope Pius IX sent funds, Queen Victoria personally gave the modern day equivalent of €70,000, while some Native Americans famously sent money and grain (an act of generosity still remembered to this day, and publicly commemorated by President Robinson in the 1990s). Nevertheless such charitable donations could not solve the scale of the problem.

Critics have observed how during this time, Irish & Anglo-Irish landowners exported corn (and other crops) which could have saved the lives of many Irish people. Conversely, it may be argued that such arguments mis-understand the nature of the famine economy, where many estates were only kept afloat and so were able to avoid mass evictions, provide famine relief through their rates to the Poor Law Union or were able to reduce rents, through the grain exports income. Economic historians have argued that not to continue the export could have plunged the entire Irish economy into economic meltdown; if estates went bankrupt, so would all the local towns that depended on them, throwing hundreds of thousands more into destitution. Without rates from estates, the Poor Law Unions wouldn't have money to feed the destitute, while speculators were already buying up bankrupt estates and evicting all the tenants! (No tenants meant no rates to pay!) There were also not enough mills immediately available in Ireland had all the corn been kept to be used at home. Peel's solution was simple: keep exporting to avoid economic collapse, while importing Indian maize to feed the starving. Unfortunately Russell failed to do the latter. 1>
PERCENTAGE DECLINE IN POPULATION BY REGION: 1841-51
Leinster Munster Ulster Connacht Ireland
15.3 22.5 15.7 28.8 19.9
Table from Joe Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society (Gill History of Ireland Series No.10) p.2

The Aftermath

Potato blights continued in Ireland, especially in 1872 and 1879-1880. These killed few people, partly because they were less severe, but mainly due to a complex range of reasons. The growth in the numbers of railways made the importation of foodstuffs easier; in 1834, Ireland had 6 miles of railway tracks; by 1912, the total was 3,403. The banning of sub-division, coupled with emigration, had increased the average farm holding, enabling tenant farms to diversify in terms of produce grown. The increasing wealth in urban areas meant alternative sources of food, grain, potatoes and seed were available in towns and villages. The 1870s agricultural economy thus was more efficient and less dependent on potatoes, as well as having access to new farm machinery and product control that had not existed thirty years earlier.

Crucially, the economic policy of laissez faire that had been fashionable in the 1840s was no longer so fashionable in the 1870s. Some claim that because of this, state intervention was quicker, more effective, and more directed than had been the case in the 1840s. Of particular importance was the wholesale re-organisation of the agricultural sector, which had begun after the famine with the Emcumbered Estates Act and which in the period (1870s-1900s) saw the nature of Irish landholding changed completely, with small owned farms replacing mass estates and multiple tenants. Many of the large estates in the 1840s were debt ridden and heavily mortgaged. In contrast, estates in the 1870s, many of them under new Irish middle class owners thanks to the Encumbered Estates Act, were on a better economic footing, and so capable of reducing rents and providing locally organised relief, as was the Roman Catholic Church, which was better organised and funded than it had been in 1847-49.

If sub-division produced earlier marriage and larger families, its abolition produced the opposite effect; the 'inheriting' child would wait until they found the 'right' partner, preferably one with a large dowry to bring to the farm. Other children, no longer with the possibility of inheriting a farm (or part of it at least) had no economic attraction and no financial resources to consider an early marriage.

As a result, later mini-famines made only minimal impact and are generally forgotten, except by historians. However, even though by the 1880s Ireland went through an economic boom unprecedented until the Celtic Tiger (1995-2002), emigration, often of children who no longer could inherit a share in the land and who as a result chose to go abroad for economic advantage and to avoid poverty, continued. By the 1911 census, the island of Ireland's population had fallen to 4.4 million, about the same as the population in 1800 and 2000 and only a half of its peak population.

The same mould (Phytophthora infestans) was responsible for the 1847-51 and later famines. When people speak of "The Irish potato famine", or "an Gorta Mor", (pronounced, 'on gore-ta more') they nearly always mean the one of the 1840s, even though a similar Great Famine in fact hit in the early eighteenth century. The fact that only four types of potato were brought from America was at the root of the famine. In fact the lack of genetic diversity in the food made it possible for a single fungus-relative to have those devastating consequences.

Continued: Irish potato famine (legacy)

For references, external links, and additional reading, please see:Irish potato famine (footnotes)

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Irish potato famine."

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Irish Republic

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Note: This article is about the historic Irish Republic: Not to be confused with the modern Republic of Ireland (1949 - present), which is often incorrectly referred to as the 'Irish Republic.' [1]

The Irish Republic was the Irish state set up by Dáil Éireann, the illegal assembly made up of the majority of Irish MPss elected in the British general election in 1918, the state failed to achieve any international recognition and lasted until 1922 when it was replaced by the Irish Free State.

It origins dated back to the Easter Rising of 1916, when a small minority of Irish republicans under Padraig Pearse seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic. Though this insurrection was crushed, and at the time had little public support, its surviving leaders, notably Eamon de Valera seized control of a small monarchist party, Sinn Féin that had wrongly been credited by the British Government and the people with being behind the Rising, and used it as a vehicle to campaign for a republic. It won a clear majority of (largely uncontested) seats in the 1918 general election and formed the Assembly of Ireland (in gaelic, Dáil Éireann) in Dublin. The Dáil first assembled in the Mansion House in Dublin in January 1919.

The new body passed a series of documents, including

Government

Its government was initially made up of a ministry or cabinet called the Áireacht, presided over by a Príomh Áire or prime minister. An alternative english title, President of Dáil Éireann came to be used, in particular during the second office holder's tour of the United States. The first President of Dáil Éireann was Cathal Brugha, was elected to the post in January 1919 because the person who would have received it, Eamon de Valera was in a British gaol. In April 1919, having escaped, Eamon de Valera was elected to the post, following Brugha's resignation.

Initially the Irish Republic had no head of state, not least because Sinn Féin was still badly split between monarchists (led by Arthur Griffith) and republicans under de Valera. In August 1921, de Valera had Dáil Éireann upgrade his post to a full head of state, known as President of the Republic.

War of Independence

From 1919 to 1921 the Irish War of Independence was fought, between the Irish Republican Army (the paramilitary army of the Irish Republic) and British forces, notably the notorious Black and Tans (former soldiers specially recruited, who wore uniforms of blan and khaki, hence the name). Both sides carried out brutal murders; The Black and Tans burned entire villages and massacred ordinary civilians, while the IRA burned historic buildings and mounted a form of ethnic clensing against protestants, particularly in the Munster area. (They even tried to burn down historic Carton House, the home of the eighteenth century Irish patriot and rebel, Lord Edward Fitzgerald until a family member reasoned with them!)

The largely Catholic police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary found itself caught in the middle; murdered by the IRA as part of the Crown forces, while trying to restrain and halt by brutality of the Black and Tans. By 1921, the IRA, as its senior strategist, the Irish Republic's Minister for Finance, Michael Collins admitted, was on the brink of collapse. Luckily however, the British government did not realise how close they were to victory, and offered a Truce which the astonished Irish leaders accepted.

The Treaty

In December 1921, negotiators from the Irish Republic's government, led by Griffith and Collins and the British Government team under Prime Minister David Lloyd George and including Winston Churchill, signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, replacing the Irish Republic with a new dominion called the Irish Free State. The leadership of the Republic split between pro and anti-treatyites, the latter under the leadership of resigned president Eamon de Valera. However the public clearly was in favour of the Treaty and the new state. The Civil War ended in 1923.

The Irish Republic had a short existence. It is difficult to work out exactly what public support it had, for of the two elections that took place during its existence, in 1918 and 1921, the former saw most seats won without a contest, while in the latter all seats but four were elected unopposed. Whether that was because of genuine public support or fear of challenging Sinn Féin and in particular the IRA is impossible to guess. Accounts have come to light of by-elections being won by Sinn Féin in 1917 and 1918 because, in one notorious case, a gun was placed to the head of Returning Officer about to announce the victory of a non-Sinn Féin candidate and he was told to 'think again'. (He recounted and 'found' extra votes that 'gave' the seat to Sinn Féin.) A recent Irish academic study, on the basis of examining voting patterns in contested seats, in contested by-elections and in local government elections, concluded that Sinn Fein had the support of somewhere between 45% and 48% of the electorate.

But given the likelihood that a large proportion of voters supporting the party did not necessarily agree with its policy platform (a common occurrence in democracies, where votes may be gained through (i) support for popular candidates irrespective of policy, (ii) voters who join a perceived 'bandwagon', (iii) people being turned off by rival parties and so vote for the 'least worst option', (iv) personal reasons separate from national agendas) it seems likely that probably no more than one in three Irish voters in 1918 supported the idea of UDI (Unilaterally Declared Independence), with the vast majority accepting for some form of workable self government short of an independent republic. Such analysis reflects contemporary records and memories of those who lived in the period, who spoke of the vast majority of people in their areas being either indifferent, unenthuastic or moderate in their views, with only small groups (whether Sinn Féin, the Irish Parliamentary Party or unionists) being passionately committed to a 'cause'.

Though the leaders tried to set up a functioning parliament and government, the Irish Republic never was internationally acknowledged as a legitimate regime by any state in the world. Efforts by President de Valera in the United States and the Republic's 'ambassador' at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War One, Sean T. O'Kelly to get international recognition failed. According to international law, and even most Irish historians, the real government in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 continued to be the British Dublin Castle regime under the Chief Secretary of Ireland (the British cabinet minister who effectively headed the Dublin Castle administration) and the nominal head, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the King's representative. Even some of those who fought to 'preserve the Republic' and abandon the Anglo-Irish Treaty in the Irish Civil War (1922-23), most notably Eamon de Valera, later admitted that their opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Irish Free State was a mistake. (De Valera answerably unambiguously 'opposing the Treaty' when asked near the end of his life by someone 'what was your biggest mistake?')

Speaking in Dáil Éireann in the 1990s, current Taoiseach (prime minister) and leader of the anti-treaty Fianna Fáil party, Bertie Ahern, admitted that the real date from which Irish independence should be measured, isn't 1919 and the formation of the Irish Republic but 1922 and the formation of the Irish Free State, the first internationally recognised, legally legitimate Irish State.

Footnote

1 The Republic of Ireland is often incorrectly referred to as the 'Irish Republic' in some elements of the British media, notably the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and The Times. The usage of the term, though incorrect and having no basis in law, declined somewhat in the 1990s but still remains inexplicably the preferred house style in some British publications.

Additional Reading

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Kingdom of Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Kingdom of Ireland was the name given to the English-ruled Irish state in 1541, by an act of the Irish Parliament. It replaced the Lordship of Ireland, which had been created in 1171. The first King of Ireland was King Henry VIII.

The Throne of Ireland was occupied by the reigning King of England. The Kingdom of Ireland was governed by an executive under the control of the Lord Deputy, later called Lord Lieutenant. While some Irish men held the post, most Lords Deputy were English noblemen.


Royal Coat of Arms after the Act of Union 1800
displayed over the 18th century King's Inns in Dublin. These arms of dominion are similar to the royal arms before the union inasmuch as the arms of Ireland (the harp) form one quarter of the shield with the remaining quarters referring to the kings other realms (ie: England, Scotland, Hanover, France!).

It was legislated for by a bicameral Irish Parliament, made up of a House of Commons and a House of Lords, which almost always met in Dublin. The powers of the Irish parliament were restricted by a series of laws, notably Poynings Law of 1492. Roman Catholics were for much of its later history excluded from membership of the Irish parliament. Parliament in the eighteenth century met in a new, purposely designed parliament house (the first purposely designed two chamber parliament house in world history) in College Green in the heart of Dublin.

Many of these restrictions were repealed in 1782, allowing what came to be known as the Constitution of 1782. Parliament in this period came to be known as Grattan's Parliament, after one of the principal Irish political opposition leaders of the period, Henry Grattan.

By an Act of the Irish Parliament passed in 1800, the Kingdom of Ireland merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish Parliament ceased to exist, though the executive, presided over by the Lord Lieutenant, remained in place right up to 1922.

In 1922, the twenty-six southern counties that formed the Irish Free State left the United Kingdom. Under the Irish Free State Constitution, the King became King in Ireland. This was however changed fundamentally under the Royal Titles Act, 1927, by which the King explicitly became king of all his dominions in their own right, becoming fully King of Ireland instead. Though Kevin O'Higgins, Vice-President of the Executive Council (ie, deputy prime minister), did suggest resurrecting the 'Kingdom of Ireland' as a dual monarchy to link Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State, with the King of Ireland being formally crowned in a public ceremony in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, the idea was abandoned after O'Higgins' death in 1927.

1>
Preceded by:
Lordship of Ireland 		Irish States (1171-present) Succeeded by:
United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Kingdom of Ireland."

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Law of Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Ireland has a common law legal system with three main sources of law: While Ireland became an independent state in 1922, the 1922 Constitution carried all previous UK law forward into Irish law, unless it was subsequently amended. The 1937 Constitution also carried forward all pre-1937 law.

External links

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List of cities in Ireland

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

This is a list of cities in Ireland:

See also: List of cities, Towns of the Republic of Ireland

External link

Map

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "List of cities in Ireland."

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List of Irish television channels

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Terrestrial Stations

These channels are available as free-to-air analogue broadcasts, as well as on digital, satellite and cable systems.

In addition, large parts of the Republic of Ireland can also receive the five British networks from Northern Ireland or Wales.

Free Digital Channels

Most of these channels are available on the Freeview service as well as in basic digital cable and satellite packages.

Satellite & Cable

These channels are only available on cable and satellite television, whether in basic packages or as premium channels. Most of them originate from the UK. Note: many channels have "+1" services, carrying the same programmes delayed by one hour to give viewers a second chance to catch a favourite programme.

See also: Lists of television channels
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "List of Irish television channels."
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List of Presidents of Ireland
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
See President of Ireland


The next presidential election is due in November 2004.

See also 

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Music of Ireland
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Ireland is internationally known for its folk music, which has remained a vibrant tradition throughout the 20th century, when many traditional forms worldwide lost popularity to pop music.  In spite of emigration and a well-developed connection to music imported from the United Kingdom and United States, Irish music has kept many of its traditional aspects.  It has also been modernized, however, and fused with rock and roll, punk rock and other genres.  Some of these fusion artists have attained much mainstream success, at home and abroad, including Sinead O'Connor, Van Morrison, The Pogues, The Chieftains, The Cranberries and the Afro-Celt Sound System.

Irish traditional music is meant for dancing at celebrations for weddings, saint's days or other observances.  Songs are almost always divided into two eight-bar strains which are each played twice to make a 32-bar whole.  This makes for an eminently danceable music, and Irish dance has been widely exported abroad.  Set dancing is the most popular of the Irish traditional dances, having been revived in the early 1980s and popularized after Riverdance's surprise success in 1994.  Riverdance was a group starring Michael Flately and Jean Butler that formed to perform during an interval in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest and soon became popular throughout the world.  Other traditional dances include reels and jigs, as well as imported polkas and [[mazurka]s.

Pub sessions are now the home for much of Irish traditional music, which takes place at informal gatherings in urban pubs.  The first of these modern pub sessions took place in 1947 in London's Camden Town at a bar called The Devonshire Arms; the practice was only later introduced to Ireland.  By the 1960s pubs like O'Donoghues in Dublin were holding their own pub sessions, and the Fleadh Ceoil music festival was sparking increased popular interest in traditional music.

Traditional Irish instruments include:

The uillean pipes play a prominent part in a form of instrumental music called Fonn Mall, descendents of ancient songs, as well as in the unaccompanied vocal music called sean nós.  Tony McMahon, Davy Spillane and Altan play these traditional airs, while Seán Ó Riada's The Chieftains are largely responsible for the revitalization of folk music in the 1960s.  Traditional music, especially sean nós, played a major part in Irish popular music later in the century, with Van Morrison, Hothouse Flowers and Sinead O'Connor using traditional elements in popular songs.  The Pogues, led by Shane MacGowan, helped fuse Irish folk with punk rock to some success beginning in the 1980s, while the Afro-Celt Sound System achieved considerable fame adding West African influences in the 1990s.


References


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National parks of Ireland
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
National parks in Ireland are maintained by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht, and the Islands.


External link


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Republic of Ireland
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
This article deals with the Republic of Ireland. The island as a whole is dealt with at Ireland; there is also Northern Ireland.

The Republic of Ireland is a state which covers approximately five-sixths of the island of Ireland, off the coast of northwest Europe. The remaining sixth of the island of Ireland is known as Northern Ireland and is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The country's official constitutional name is Éire, and it is commonly called Ireland, a name which is sometimes controversially used as its diplomatic name. In this article, unless otherwise indicated, Ireland refers to the Republic of Ireland.



Éire / Republic of Ireland









(In Detail)




National motto: None




Official languages            Irish, English secondary


Capital                       Dublin / Baile Átha Cliath


Largest City                       Dublin / Baile Átha Cliath


PresidentMary McAleese


Taoiseach                     Bertie Ahern, TD


Area
 - Total 
 - % water		Ranked 117th 
 70,280 km² 
 2%
               

Population 

 - Total (2002) 

 - Density		Ranked 121st

 3,840,838 

 55/km² 


Independence

 - Date                         		Anglo-Irish Treaty

December 6, 1921


Currency                      Euro¹, Irish euro coins


Time zone                     WET (UTC; UTC+1 in summer)


National anthem               Amhrán na bhFiann (the Soldier's Song)


Internet TLD .IE


Calling Code353


(1) Prior to 1999: Irish Punt




History

Main articles: History of Ireland, History of the Republic of Ireland

The difference between the island of Ireland (which was once governed as a unit) and the Republic of Ireland (which covers 26 of the 32 counties on the island) is a product of complex constitutional developments in the first half of the twentieth century. 

From 1 January 1801 until 6 December 1922 Ireland as one unit was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1919, most Irish MPs elected in the 1918 British general election declined to take their seats in the British House of Commons. Instead they set up a rival extra-legal Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann. This Dáil in January 1919 issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in the name of a proclaimed Irish Republic. In reality this republic received no international recognition. After a bitterly fought Anglo-Irish War (also known as the Irish War of Independence) representatives of the British government and the Irish republic's Áireacht (cabinet) in 1921 negotiated an Anglo-Irish Treaty created a whole new system of legal Irish self government, known as dominion status. 

A new internationally recognised Irish state called the Irish Free State (in the Irish language Saorstát Éireann) was created. The new Free State was in theory to cover the entire island, subject to the proviso that Northern Ireland (which had been created as a separate entity under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920 could opt out and choose to remain part of the United Kingdom, which it duly did. The remaining 26 counties of Ireland became the Irish Free State, a constitutional monarchy over which the British monarch reigned (from 1927 with the title King of Ireland). It had a Governor-General,  a bicameral parliament,  a cabinet called the Executive Council and a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council. The constitution was called the Irish Free State Constitution. 

On the 29 December 1937 a new constitution Bunreacht na hÉireann came into being. It replaced the Irish Free State by a new state called Éire. Though this state's constitutional structures provided for a President of Ireland instead of a king, it was not a republic. The principal key role possessed by a head of state, that of representing the state symbolically internationally remained vested in statute law in the King as an organ. On 1 April 1949 the Republic of Ireland Act declared Éire a republic, with the functions previously given to the King given instead to the President of Ireland.  

Though the official name of the state remained Éire, the term Republic of Ireland (officially just the description of the new state), came to be used as its name. While the Republic choses to use the word Ireland to describe itself, particularly in the diplomatic sphere (thus it is always the President of Ireland and the Constitution of Ireland), many states avoid using that term because of the existence of a second Ireland, Northern Ireland, and because the 1937 constitution claimed that the south had jurisdiction over the north. Using the word 'Ireland' was taken as accepting that claim and so caused offence in Northern Ireland. That claim, in what was known as Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 constitution, was repealed in 1999. 

The Irish Free State/Éire remained a member of the British Commonwealth until the declaration of a republic in April 1949. Under Commonwealth rules at the time, declaration of a republic automatically terminated membership of the association. This was before the rules were changed to allow India to become a republic within the Commonweath. Although Ireland ceased to be a member and chose not to re-apply for membership, it retained many of the privileges of Commonwealth membership. To this day, for example, Irish citizens resident in the United Kingdom enjoy all the rights of citizenship, including the right to and stand for office in local or parliamentary elections, serve in the British forces.  

Ireland joined the United Nations in 1955 and the European Economic Community (now called the European Union) in 1973. Irish governments have sought the peaceful unification of Ireland and have cooperated with Britain against the violent conflict between paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. A peace settlement for Northern Ireland, known as the Belfast Agreement and approved in 1998 in a vote in both the Republic and Northern Ireland, is currently being implemented.


Politics

Main article: Politics of Ireland

The Republic of Ireland is a republic, with a parliamentary system of government. The President of Ireland (Uachtaráin na hÉireann), who serves as head of state, is elected for a 7-year term and can be re-elected only once. In carrying out certain constitutional powers and functions, the president is aided by the Council of State, an advisory body. The prime minister, the Taoiseach, is appointed by the president on the nomination of parliament. The Taoiseach is normally the leader of the political party, or a coalition, which wins the most seats in the national elections.

The bicameral parliament, the Oireachtas, consists of a Senate, the Seanad Éireann, and a House of Representatives, the Dáil Éireann. The Seanad is composed of 60 members; 11 nominated by the Taoiseach, 6 elected by the national universities, and 43 elected from panels of candidates established on a vocational basis. The Dáil has 166 members, Teachtaí Dála or Deputies, elected to represent multi-seat constituencies under the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. Under the Irish constitution (Bunreacht na hÉireann), parliamentary elections must be held at least every 7 years, though a lower limit may be set by statute law. The current statutory maximum term is every 5 years.

The Government (Án Rialtas) is constitutionally limited to 15 members. No more than two members of the Government can be selected from the Senate, and the Taoiseach, Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) and Minister for Finance must be members of the Dáil. The current government is made up of a coalition of two parties; Fianna Fáil under Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the Progressive Democrats under Tánaiste Mary Harney. The main opposition in the current Dáil is made up of Fine Gael and Labour. Smaller parties such as Sinn Féin and the Green Party also have representation in Dáil Éireann. 


Counties

Main article: Counties of Ireland

The Republic of Ireland is traditionally described as having 26 counties, which continue to be in use in e.g. a cultural, historical and sporting context. As local governmental units some have been restructured, with County Dublin broken up into four new counties in the 1990s, while County Tipperary has in fact been two separate counties for generations, producing a total of 30 administrative counties:




Geography

Main article: Geography of Ireland

The island of Ireland extends over 84,421 km² of which five-sixths belong to the Republic, with the remainder constituting Northern Ireland. It is bound to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the northeast by the North Channel. To the east is found the Irish Sea which reconnects to the ocean via the southwest with St. George's Channel and the Celtic Sea. The west-coast of Ireland mostly consists of cliffs, hills and low mountains (the highest point being Carrauntoohil at 1,041 m). The centre of the country is relatively flat farmland, traversed by rivers such as the Shannon and several large lakes or loughs\.

The local temperate climate is modified by the North Atlantic Current and relatively mild. Summers are rarely very hot, but it freezes only occasionally in winter. Precipitation is very common, with up to 275 days with rain in some parts of the country. Chief cities are the capital Dublin on the east coast, Cork in the south, and Galway and Limerick on the west coast (see Towns and cities of the Republic of Ireland).


Economy

Main article: Economy of Ireland

The Republic of Ireland is a small, modern, trade-dependent economy with growth averaging a robust 9% in 1995-2001. Agriculture, once the most important sector, is now dwarfed by industry, which accounts for 38% of GDP, about 80% of exports, and employs 28% of the labour force. Although exports remain the primary engine for Ireland's robust growth, the economy is also benefiting from a rise in consumer spending and recovery in both construction and business investment. 

Over the past decade, the Irish government has implemented a series of national economic programs designed to curb inflation, reduce government spending, increase labour force skills, and promote foreign investment. Ireland joined in launching the euro currency system in January 1999 along with 11 other EU nations.  This period of high economic growth came to be called the Celtic Tiger. The economy felt the impact of the global economic slowdown in 2001, particularly in the high-tech export sector; the growth rate was cut by nearly half. Growth in 2002 is expected to fall in the 3%-5% range.


Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Ireland

Most Irish are either of Celtic or English ethnicity. The official languages are Irish (Gaelic), the native Celtic language, and English, which is constitutionally described as a secondary official language. Learning Irish is compulsory in education, but English is by far the predominant language. Public signs are usually bilingual and national media in Irish also exist. People living in predominantly Irish speaking communities (the Gaeltacht) are limited to the low tens of thousands in isolated pockets largely on the western seaboard.

The Republic of Ireland is officially 92% Roman Catholic. However there had been a massive decline in adherence to Roman Catholicism among Irish Catholics. Between 1996 and 2001, regular Mass attendance, already previously in decline, declined from 60% to 48% (it had been 90%+ in 1973), and all but two of its priest-training seminaries have either closed or are expected to close soon. The Church was also hit in the 1990s by a series of sexual scandals and cover-up charges against its hierarchy. In 1995, after
an approx. 58-year ban, voters chose to re-legalize divorce in the Republic.

The second largest religion, the  Church of Ireland (Anglican), having been in decline for most of the twentieth century, has now experienced an increase in membership, according to the 2002 census, as have other small Christian denominations and Islam.  The very small Jewish Congregation in Ireland however has continued to decline in numbers. 


Culture

Main article: Culture of Ireland

The island of Ireland has produced the Book of Kells, Guinness, Irish traditional music, and writers such as George Berkeley, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Séamus Heaney, and others. Shaw, Yeats, Beckett and Heaney are Nobel Literature laureates. 

The most famous Irish exports in the late twentieth century included the rock group U2, Sinéad O'Connor, Bob Geldof, The Corrs and the dance show Riverdance. Its most prominent world figure was Mary Robinson, from 1997 to 2002, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.


Miscellaneous topics


Reference


External links




European Union:

Austria  |  Belgium  |  Denmark  |  Finland  |  France  |  Germany  |  Greece | Ireland
Italy  |  Luxembourg  |  Netherlands  |  Portugal  |  Spain  |  United Kingdom

Countries acceding to membership on May 1, 2004:

Cyprus  |  Czech Republic   |  Estonia  |  Hungary  |  Latvia  |  Lithuania   |  Malta  |  Poland  |  Slovakia  |  Slovenia





Countries of the world  |  Europe  |  Council of Europe











Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Republic of Ireland."
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Taoiseach
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Taoiseach (generally pronounced /"ty: S'Vx/ [1], where the /x/ sounds as in "loch", though some speakers of Donegal Gaelic pronounce it as /"ty: S'@/;  plural: Taoisigh, pronounced /"ty: Si:/ ) is the title of Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland. The office, whose title literally means The Chief or The Leader (though translated in the constitution as 'prime minister')  was created in Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish constitutution adopted in 1937 and drafted by Eamon de Valera. The Taoiseach's Deputy is called Tánaiste (pronounced /"tA niS' t'@/). Both terms have ancient gaelic origins, though some historians dispute their precise meanings; some suggest a taoiseach was a minor king, while a tánaiste was governor placed in a kingdom whose king had been deposed.

The current taoiseach (2002) is Bertie Ahern of the Fianna Fáil party. He heads a Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat coalition government, which was re-elected in the 2002 Irish general election.  

There have been two different heads of government since 1922, when the first independent Irish state, the Irish Free State was internationally recognised. Under the 1922 Constitution drafted by Michael Collins, the title of prime minister was "President of the Executive Council". That office held considerably less power than the modern taoiseach. For example, he could not dismiss a government minister. (The government, known in the 1922 Constitution as the Executive Council had to be disbanded and reformed to drop a minister.) He personally also could not seek a dissolution of Dáil Éireann from the Governor-General; that power belonged collectively to the Executive Council. 

The Taoiseach under the 1937 Bunreacht na hÉireann possesses a much more powerful role than that of the President of the Executive Council. He chooses ministers, who once approved by Dáil Éireann are appointed by the President of Ireland. He can instruct the President to dismiss ministers. (Among the most famous dismissals are Charles J. Haughey and Neil Blaney in 1970, Brian Lenihan in 1990 and Albert Reynolds, Padraig Flynn and Máire Geoghegan-Quinn in 1991. The Irish cabinet, called the 'Government', consists of no fewer than seven and no more than fifteen ministers. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance, must be members of Dáil Éireann. One or two ministers may be appointed from Seanad Éireann, the Irish Senate. (In reality, since 1937, only two members of the Seanad have been appointed to the Government.) 

The Taoiseach also appoints eleven members of Seanad Éireann, the sixty member Irish Senate. 

Once appointed, a Taoiseach cannot be forced automatically to resign. He can however be forced either to resign or request the President grant a parliamentary dissolution, if either a Motion of Confidence is defeated or a Motion of No Confidence passed by Dáil Éireann. Alternatively Dáil Éireann may "refuse supply" (ie, deny government funds from the Exchequer). Such a situation occurred in January 1982 when the Fine Gael/Labour government of Garret FitzGerald was defeated in a Dáil vote on the budget. 

The President may, under Article 13.2.2. of Bunreacht na hÉireann "in his absolute discretion" refuse to dissolve Dáil Éireann on the advice of a Taoiseach who has "ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann." In that event, the Taoiseach, under Article 28.10 is obliged to submit his resignation to the President. No President to date has refused a dissolution of Dáil Éireann.


Taoisigh to Date

(Where a multi-party or coalition government existed, the Taoiseach came from the first party in the list. The exception is John A. Costello, who was not leader of his party, but an agreed choice to head the government, because the other parties refused to accept then Fine Gael Leader Richard Mulcahy as Taoiseach.)


Taoisigh na hÉireann




TaoiseachTerm of OfficePartyProfession

Eamon de Valera1 July 1937-18 February 1948Fianna FáilProfessor

John A. Costello18 February 1948-13 June 1951Fine GaelLawyer

Eamon de Valera13 June 1951-2 June 1954Fianna FáilProfessor

John A. Costello2 June 1954-20 March 1957Fine GaelLawyer

Eamon de Valera20 March 1957-23 June 1959Fianna FáilProfessor

Sean Lemass23 June 1957-10 November 1966Fianna FáilBusinessman

Jack Lynch10 November 1966-14 March 1973Fianna FáilBarrister

Liam Cosgrave14 March 1973-5 July 1977Fine GaelLawyer

Jack Lynch5 July 1977-11 December 1979Fianna FáilBarrister

Charles Haughey11 December 1979-30 June 1981Fianna FáilAccountant

Garret FitzGerald30 June 1981-9 March 1982Fine GaelJournalist

Charles Haughey9 March 1982-14 December 1982Fianna FáilAccountant

Garret FitzGerald14 December 1982-10 March 1987Fine GaelJournalist

Charles Haughey10 March 1987-11 February 1992Fianna FáilAccountant

Albert Reynolds11 February 1992-15 December 1994Fianna FáilBusinessman

John Bruton15 December 1994-26 June 1997Fine GaelLawyer

Bertie Ahern26 June 1997-Fianna FáilAccountant



Presidents of the Executive Council




PresidentYearsPartyProfession

W.T. Cosgrave1922-'32Cumann na nGaedhaelBusinessman

Eamon de Valera1932-'37Fianna FáilProfessor



see also: President of Ireland, Tánaiste, Bunreacht na hÉireann, Republic of Ireland, Irish Free State, University College Dublin


The book Chairman or Chief: The Role of the Taoiseach in Irish Government (1971) by Brian Farrell provides a good overview of the conflicting roles for An Taoiseach. Though long out of print, it may still be available in libraries. Biographies are also available of de Valera, Lemass, Lynch, Cosgrave, FitzGerald, Haughey, Reynolds and Ahern. FitzGerald wrote an autobiography, while an authorized biography was produced of de Valera.

For information on earlier Irish heads of government under Irish Republic see President of Dáil Éireann and President of the Republic sites.


Some Biographies of former Taoisigh & Presidents of the Executive Council



1>



Preceded by:
President of the Executive Council (1922-1937)

Irish Prime Ministerial Offices

Office remains in existence



Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Taoiseach."
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Towns of the Republic of Ireland
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
This is a link page for cities and towns in the Republic of Ireland.  Cities are shown in bold.


A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 


A

Abbeyleix, Ardara, Arklow, Athlone, Athy


B

Ballina, Ballinakill, Ballinamore, Ballybunion, Ballydehob, Ballymote, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Birr, Boyle, Bray


C

Cahersiveen, Cahir, Carlow, Carndonagh, Carrickmacross, Carrick-on-Shannon, Carrick-on-Suir, Carrigallen, Cashel, Castlebar, Castlerea, Castletownbere, Cavan, Clifden, Clonakilty, Clones, Clonmel, Cobh, Cork


D

Dalkey, Dingle, Donabate, Donegal, Drogheda, Dublin, Dundalk, Dunfanaghy, Dungarvan, Durrow


E

Ennis, Enniscorthy


G

Galway, Glenties, Graiguenamanagh


K

Kells, Kenmore, Kildare, Kilkenny, Killarney, Kilmallock, Kilrush, Kilkee, Kinsale


L

Letterkenny, Limerick, Lisdoonvarna, Lismore, Listowel, Longford

M

Malahide, Manorhamilton, Midleton, Monaghan, Mountmellick, Mullingar


N

Naas, Navan, Nenagh, Newbridge, Newcastle West, Newport, New Ross


O

Oldcastle


P

Portarlington, Portlaoise


R

Rathkeale, Roscommon, Rosslare


S

Skibbereen, Sligo, Strokestown


T

Templemore, Thurles, Tipperary, Tobercurry, Tralee, Trim, Tuam, Tullamore


W

Waterford, Westport, Wexford, Wicklow


Y

Youghal


See also


List of towns in England, Northern Ireland, Wales

List of burghs in Scotland

List of cities in the United Kingdom
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Towns of the Republic of Ireland."
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Transportation in Ireland
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Railways:

total:
1,947 km

broad gauge:
1,947 km 1.600-m gauge (38 km electrified; 485 km double track) (1998)

Iarnród Éireann provides rail services linking Dublin (Pearse, Connolly & Heuston Stns.) to Cork (Kent Stn.), Waterford (Plunket Stn.), Kilkenny (MacDonagh Stn.), Galway (Ceannt Stn.), Tralee (Casement Stn.), Sligo (MacDiarmada Stn.), Limerick (Colbert Stn.) and Belfast.  Since 1984 an electrically operated train service runs between Bray and Howth.  It is called the Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART).  Noises have been made about the possibility of both a tram system and a subway system for Dublin, but a decision has yet to be made.


Highways:

total:
92,500 km

paved:
87,043 km (including 115 km of expressways)

unpaved:
5,457 km (1999 est.)

Ireland's roads link Dublin with all the major cities (Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Belfast).  See also: Roads in Ireland

Driving is on the left. 

Waterways:
700 km (limited for commercial traffic) (1998)

Pipelines:
natural gas 225 km (1998)

Ports and harbors:
Arklow, Cork, Drogheda, Dublin, Foynes, Galway, Limerick, New Ross, Waterford

Merchant marine:

total:
31 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 100,639 GRT/115,793 DWT

ships by type:
bulk 1, cargo 27, container 2, short-sea passenger 1 (1999 est.)

Airports:
44 (1999 est.)

Airports - with paved runways:

total:
17

over 3,047 m:
1

2,438 to 3,047 m:
1

1,524 to 2,437 m:
3

914 to 1,523 m:
5

under 914 m:
7 (1999 est.)

Airports - with unpaved runways:

total:
27

914 to 1,523 m:
2

under 914 m:
25 (1999 est.)

Ireland's main airports are located at Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Derry and Shannon.  Regional airports are located at Farranfore, Galway, Sligo and Waterford.  Ireland's national airline, Aer Lingus provides air services from Dublin, Cork and Shannon to Britain, Europe and North America.  Other airlines operate similar routes.


See also : Republic of Ireland
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Transportation in Ireland."
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Abbreviations & Acronyms: Ireland
The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted.
EntrySourceExpressionField
IRLEnglishIrelandGeography, Law
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).
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Synonyms: Ireland
Synonyms: Eire (n), Emerald Isle (n), Hibernia (n), Irish Free State (n). (additional references)
Top     
Crosswords: Ireland
English words defined with "Ireland": capital of Ireland, capital of Northern Ireland, Church of Ireland ♦ Northern Ireland ♦ United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. (references)
Etymologies containing "Ireland": Limerick. (references)
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Modern Usage: Ireland
DomainUsage
Screenplays
I wouldn't trade places with Edmund Exley right now for all the whisky in Ireland. (L.A. Confidential; writing credit: Brian Helgeland)
There's mention some two hundred years ago in Ireland of, of Angelus, the one with the angelic face (Buffy the Vampire Slayer; writing credit: Doreen Spicer)
Personally, mind you! It was the most stimulating minute-and-a-half I spent in Ireland! (Midnight Lace; writing credit: Janet Green; Ivan Goff)
Nah none taken sir, I grew up here, all I ever knew of Ireland was from the talk of the others at the orphan asylum (Gangs of New York; writing credit: Jay Cocks)
Ireland, right (Finding Forrester; writing credit: Mike Rich)
Lyrics
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley (Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner; performing artist: Warren Zevon; writing credit: Warren Zevon & David Lindell c. 1976 Zevon Music, BMI)
Clever
Nitrogen is not found in Ireland because it is not found in a free state. (references; author: unknown)
Movie/TV Titles
Sean O'Casey: The Spirit of Ireland (1965)
Doughboys in Ireland (1943)
Men of Ireland (1938)
Ireland or Bust (1932)
Songs of Ireland (1925)
Song Titles
Farewell to Ireland (performing artist: The Dalraida Brothers)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Commercial Usage: Ireland
DomainTitle
References
  • Bank of Ireland: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (reference)
  • The 2000 Import and Export Market for Shelled Eggs in Ireland (reference)
  • Executive Report on Strategies in Ireland,1999 edition (reference)
  • The 2000 Import and Export Market for Dairy Products and Birds’ Eggs in Ireland (reference)
  • A Strategic Profile of Ireland,1999 edition (reference)
    (more reference examples)
  
Books
  • Occupational Accidents and Diseases: Data Sources, Ireland (reference)
  • Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Victoria (reference)
  • Bed & Breakfast Stops 2001: Value for Money Accomodation in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (Bed and Breakfast Stops, England, Scotland and wale (reference)
  • Informal Justice in Divided Societies: Northern Ireland and South Africa (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series (Palgrave (Firm)).) (reference)
  • Native Vs. Settler: Ethnic Conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa (Contributions in Military Studies, No 200) (reference)
    (more book examples)
  
Periodicals
  
Theater & Movies
  • Ireland: Western Ireland, Dublin and Belfast (reference)
  • Discoveries Ireland, A Celtic Treasure (reference)
  • James Galway and the Chieftains In Ireland (reference)
  • Kilkenny:Countries of Ireland (reference)
  • Discoveries Ireland, The Emerald Isle (reference)
    (more DVD examples; more video examples)
  
Music
  
High Tech
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Image Slideshow: Ireland
Photos:
Ireland
More pictures...
Illustrations:
Ireland
More pictures...
Computer Images:
Ireland
More pictures...
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Photo Album: Ireland
ThumbnailDescription & CreditThumbnailDescription & Credit
Sheep at Glencolumkille, County Donegal, Ireland.  Atlantic Ocean in background. Credit: CDC.
Swirling Skies Near  Ireland. Credit: NASA.
Deepsea soundings by the USS ARCTIC - Otway Berryman commanding Top line is ship track between Newfoundland and Ireland Bottom line is profile and shows no plateau Generated a controversy with Matthew Fontaine Maury Maury declared erroneous and continued touting "Telegraphic Plateau". Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection.
Plate VI.  20.  Pristiurus atlanticus, Vaillant.  From Vaillant, "Exporations Scientifiques du Travailleur et Talisman."  21.  Oxynotus centrina, (Linnaeus), Rafinesque.  From Bonaparte, "Fauna Italica."  22.  Chlamydoselachus anguineus, Garman.  From Day, "Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland.". Credit: National Marine Fisheries Historical Image Collection.
Plate VIII. 25. Raia circularis, Couch.  From Day, "Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland."  26.  Raia plutonia, Garman.  Outline by J. C. Van Hook, from a specimen collected by the BLAKE, N. Lat. 32, W. Long. 78, at a depth of 229-334 fathoms. Credit: National Marine Fisheries Historical Image Collection.
Figure 22.  The Thor ring-trawl net used in deep water.  Devised by Johannes Schmidt in 1905 and used for carrying out studies on board the THOR.  This net was used to capture fish in very deep water.  It was first tested in waters between 1040 and 1090 meters depth off SW Ireland.  The ring was originally made in one piece but George Hansen designed it in two to allow it to fold up. Credit: Sailing for Science - the NOAA Fleet Then and Now.
Two overlapping TIROS I images showing extratropical cyclone centered about 400 miles west of Ireland. Monthly Weather Review, March 1961, p. 80. Credit: NOAA in Space.
TIROS I image of extratropical cyclone centered about 400 miles west of Ireland.  This is the same storm shown in image spac0098.  Monthly Weather Review, March 1961, p. 81. Credit: NOAA in Space.
[Inoculation] : A Vaccination Station in Connaught, Ireland. Credit: National Library of Medicine.
Portraits of Great American Surgeons: Past Presidents of the American College of Surgeons : Merritte Weber Ireland (1867- ) / From the painting by Mathilde M. Leisenring after Thomas C. Corner. Credit: National Library of Medicine.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.
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Digital Photo Gallery: Ireland
 
"Church In Ireland" by Ian Coote
Commentary: "Church in Ireland, taken Summer 2003. ."		"Firetruck from Ireland" by John Donovan
Commentary: "Back of fire engine from Ireland."

Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.
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Familiar Quotations: Ireland
AuthorQuotation
Saint Patrick
All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
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Historic Usage: Ireland
AuthorDateQuotation
Magna Carta
1215
John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, to the archbishop, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciaries, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his bailiffs and liege subjects, greetings. (reference)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
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Use in Literature: Ireland
TitleAuthorQuote
Emma
Austen, Jane
The case is, you see, that the Campbells are going to Ireland.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce, James
The priests were always the true friends of Ireland.
Walden
Thoreau, Henry David
Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
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Non-Fiction Usage: Ireland
SubjectTopicQuote
Health
In Italy about 1 in 250 people and in Ireland about 1 in 300 people have celiac disease. (references)
School of Clinical Speech and Language Studies, The University of Dublin, Trinity College, IRL-Dublin, Ireland. (references)
Business
U.K. Travelers represent almost half of all tourist arrivals in Ireland. (references)
The largest importers of Polish military products are Yemen, India, the Czech Republic, Ireland and Germany. (references)
A "major" market is defined as a country where Ireland represents a substantially large share of either imports or exports. (references)
Civil Liberties
United Kingdom
In September Sunday World journalist Martin O'Hagen was killed in a drive-by shooting near his home in Northern Ireland. (references)
United Kingdom
The Public Processions (Northern Ireland) Act grants responsibility for ruling on disputed marches to a Parades Commission. (references)
United Kingdom
Paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland continued to threaten individuals and families to compel them to leave the province. (references)
Economic History
Ireland
U.S. wine exports to Ireland continue to grow. (references)
United Kingdom
Successive English kings sought to conquer Ireland. (references)
Ireland
A full range of advertising media is available in Ireland. (references)
Human Rights
United Kingdom
His trial continued in the Republic of Ireland at year's end. (references)
United Kingdom
In Northern Ireland a Human Rights Commission was established as an outcome of the peace process. (references)
United Kingdom
The Criminal Cases Review Commission operates as an additional appellate body in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. (references)
Minorities
United Kingdom
However, the fear of intercommunal violence has, over the years, led to a pattern of segregated communities in Northern Ireland. (references)
United Kingdom
The Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order, provides specific legal protection to minority ethnic groups in Northern Ireland, including the Traveller community. (references)
United Kingdom
Employment discrimination on religious grounds is prohibited by law in Northern Ireland, although not in the rest of the country, and a public tribunal adjudicates complaints. (references)
Political Economy
IRELAND
First, over 580 U.S. firms are now located in Ireland. (references)
Ireland
This policy is an effort to "embed" these firms in Ireland. (references)
IRELAND
Both Irish and U.S. biomedical firms are active in Ireland. (references)
Political Rights
United Kingdom
As in the rest of the country, Northern Ireland has city and district councils but with fewer powers. (references)
United Kingdom
Institutions such as the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly have control over matters of regional importance, such as education, health, and some economic matters. (references)
Trade
Ireland
For imports into Ireland, the VAT is levied at the same rate as for domestic products or transactions. (references)
Travel
Ireland
Tipping is as appropriate in Ireland as it is in the United States. (references)
Ireland
The electric current in Ireland is alternating current, 50 cycle, 220 volts. (references)
Ireland
Ireland also has six regional airports served by small aircraft and helicopters. (references)
Worker Rights
Belgium
The container was loaded in Italy, shipped by rail to Germany, trucked through Belgium, and loaded onto a ferry at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge bound for Waterford, Ireland. (references)
Ireland
The NGO Ruhama, which deals with prostitutes, reported the case of an Eastern European woman who was trafficked into Ireland, and forced into prostitution; however, government officials could not confirm the case. (references)
Lexicography
Devil's Dictionary
DEINOTHERIUM, n.  An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the Pterodactyl was in fashion.  The latter was a native of Ireland, its name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl, as the man pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed.
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.
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Speeches: Ireland
SpeakerTermPhrase(s)
Bill Clinton
1993-2001America is a strong force for peace from Northern Ireland to Bosnia to the Middle East.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
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Usage Frequency: Ireland
"Ireland" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 99.95% of the time. "Ireland" is used about 9,605 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words		Rank in English
Noun (proper)99.95%9,600990 
Noun (singular)0.05%5157,705 
                    Total100.00%9,605N/A
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
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Name Usage Frequency: Ireland
The following table summarizes the usage of "Ireland" based on a population census conducted in the United States. Ranks and frequencies are based on all names reported and classified.
NameUsage/GenderUsage per 100
million Persons		Rank in USA
IrelandLast name4,0003,164
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
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Usage in Company Names: Ireland
CountryName
Ireland
Bank of Ireland
 (more examples...)
Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.
Top     
Expression: Ireland
Expressions using "Ireland": bells of Ireland ♦ capital of Ireland ♦ capital of Northern Ireland ♦ church of Ireland ♦ lord lieutenant of Ireland ♦ new Ireland ♦ northern ireland ♦ the union of great britain and ireland ♦ United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Additional references.
Hyphenated Usage
Beginning with "Ireland": Ireland-based, Ireland-born, ireland-german, Ireland-italy, ireland-originating, Ireland-registered.
Ending with "Ireland": All-ireland.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Ireland
The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day		ExpressionFrequency
per Day
ireland
12,422
job ireland
308
dublin ireland
3,898
bank of ireland
287
ireland tour
2,198
killarney ireland
252
ireland hotel
2,115
ireland bed and breakfast
241
ireland vacation
1,859
ireland history
236
ireland map
1,708
flag of ireland
211
ireland travel
1,560
waterford ireland
188
golf ireland
1,205
ireland tourism
184
ireland cork
1,147
job in ireland
183
ireland accommodation
928
yahoo uk ireland
171
northern ireland
926
ireland real estate
139
county cork ireland
910
ennis ireland
125
kathy ireland
893
property ireland
124
galway ireland
690
athlone ireland
123
kylie ireland
623
carrick ireland shannon
116
castle of ireland
435
shannon ireland
114
rental car in ireland
407
furniture ireland kathy
113
ireland weather
389
ireland cottage
109
ireland picture
375
ireland information
109
limerick ireland
329
sligo ireland
108
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Modern Translation: Ireland
Language Translations for "Ireland"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Afrikaans
  
Ierland. (various references)
   
Albanian
  
Irlandë. (various references)
   
Asturian
  
Irlanda. (various references)
   
Bulgarian 
  
Ирландия (Erin). (various references)
   
Cebuano
  
Irlanda. (various references)
   
Chinese 
  
爱尔兰 (Irish), 愛爾蘭 . (various references)
   
Czech
  
Irsko. (various references)
   
Danish
  
Irland. (various references)
   
Dutch
  
Ierland. (various references)
   
Esperanto
  
Irlando. (various references)
   
Faeroese
  
Írland. (various references)
   
Finnish
  
Irlanti (Eire, Republic of Ireland). (various references)
   
French
  
Irlande. (various references)
   
Frisian
  
Ierlân. (various references)
   
German
  
Irland (eire, Ireland (ie)). (various references)
   
Greek 
  
Ιρλανδία. (various references)
   
Hungarian
  
Írország (Erin, Green Island). (various references)
   
Irish
  
Éire, éirinn. (various references)
   
Italian
  
Irlanda. (various references)
   
Japanese Kanji 
  
北アイルランド  (Northern Ireland). (various references)
   
Japanese Katakana 
  
きたアイルランド (Northern Ireland). (various references)
   
Korean 
  
북아일랜드. (various references)
   
Macedonian
  
Irska. (various references)
   
Manx
  
Nerin. (various references)
   
Pig Latin
  
irelanday.(various references)
   
Portuguese
  
irlanda (erin). (various references)
   
Provencal
  
Irlanda. (various references)
   
Romanian
  
Irlanda (Erin). (various references)
   
Romansch
  
Irlanda. (various references)
   
Russian 
  
Ирландия (Erin). (various references)
   
Samoan
  
Irelani. (various references)
   
Serbo-Croatian
  
irska (erin). (various references)
   
Spanish
  
Irlanda (eire, Erin). (various references)
   
Swedish
  
Irland (Eire, the emerald isle). (various references)
   
Tagalog
  
Irlanda. (various references)
   
Thai
  
ไอร์แลนด์, ประเทศไอร์แลนด์ (Emerald Isle). (various references)
   
Turkish
  
Ýrlanda (Erin), Írlanda. (various references)
   
Ukrainian
  
ірландія (Erin). (various references)
   
Welsh
  
Iwerddon. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.
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Misspellings: Ireland
Misspellings
"Ireland" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Birkeland, Breland, Edelnand, Fibresand, Hieland, Irala, irela, Irelan, Irlam, irland, Irlanda, Irleland, Rimland, Tinryland, Trelawnyd. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).
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Anagrams: Ireland
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
Words within the letters "a-d-e-i-l-n-r"
-1 letter: aldrin, alined, aliner, ariled, darnel, denari, denial, derail, dialer, laired, lander, larine, linear, nailed, nailer, railed, rained, redial, relaid, renail.
-2 letters: aider, ailed, aired, alder, alien, aline, anile, ariel, deair, denar, dinar, diner, drail, drain, elain, eland, ideal, idler, irade, laden, lader, laird, learn, liane, liard, lidar, lined, liner, nadir, naled, nidal.
 Words containing the letters "a-d-e-i-l-n-r"
 
+1 letter: bilander, dragline, hardline, inlander, islander, renailed.
 
+2 letters: bandolier, bilanders, breadline, calendric, clarioned, declaring, derailing, draglines, drinkable, engrailed, girandole, headliner, heralding, inlanders, interlaid, interlard, islanders, laddering, laundries, madrilene, philander, realigned, redialing, reloading, tailender, treadling, underlaid, underlain, unridable, unrivaled, uredinial.
 
+3 letters: adenoviral, adrenaline, adulterine, aldermanic, banderilla, bandoliers, blandisher, breadlines, chandelier, credential, debonairly, delineator, derailment, disenthral, drinkables, girandoles, grainfield, headliners, highlander, hinterland, interlaced, interlards, intermodal, internodal, interplead, intertidal, inthralled, ladyfinger, laundering, linearised, linearized, linerboard, lipreading, longhaired, madrilenes, mainlander, malingered, meridional, mislearned, nephridial, normalised, normalized, overlading, palindrome, panbroiled, philanders, prudential, redialling, rehandling, reinflated, repleading, resaddling, ringleader, rudimental, sanderling, slandering, strandline, tailenders, timberland, unrealized, unrivalled, unsalaried, vernalized.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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INDEX
 1. Definition 
 2. Synonyms 
 3. Crosswords 
 4. Usage: Modern 		 5. Usage: Commercial 
 6. Images: Slideshow 
 7. Images: Photo Album 
 8. Images: Digital Art 		 9. Quotations: Familiar 
 10. Quotations: Historic 
 11. Quotations: Fiction 
 12. Quotations: Non-fiction 		 13. Quotations: Speeches 
 14. Usage Frequency 
 15. Names: Frequency 
 16. Names: Company Usage 		 17. Expressions 
 18. Expressions: Internet 
 19. Translations: Modern 
 20. Abbreviations 		 21. Acronyms 
 22. Derivations 
 23. Anagrams 
 24. Bibliography 


  
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