- Ireland Hotels, Ireland Travel Guide - |
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Ireland (Irish: Éire; Ulster Scots: Airlann) is the third largest island in Europe and the twentieth largest in the world.
It lies to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain. Politically, the Republic of Ireland (also known simply as Ireland) covers five sixths of the island, with Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, covering the remainder in the northeast.
The name 'Ireland' derives from Old Irish Ériu (in modern Irish, Éire) with the addition of the Germanic word 'land'.
This word, from Proto-Celtic *Īwerjū, which also gave Middle Welsh Iwerd "Irish Sea", originally meant "fatness", in the sense of fertile.
The population of the island is slightly under six million (2006), with 4,239,848 in the Republic of Ireland (1.7 million in Greater Dublin) and about 1.7 million in Northern Ireland (0.6 million in Greater Belfast).
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Political geography
The island of Ireland has two distinct jurisdictions: * Ireland (legal name Ireland, legal description the Republic of Ireland ), a sovereign state, covers five sixths of the island. Its capital is Dublin. * Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, covers the remaining sixth.
Its capital is Belfast.
For the political history of the island, see History of Ireland. Traditionally, Ireland is subdivided into four provinces: Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster; and, since the 19th century, 32 counties. Twenty-six of the counties are in the Republic of Ireland, and the remaining six (all in Ulster) are in Northern Ireland.
Notably, Ulster and Northern Ireland are neither synonymous nor coextensive, as three counties of Ulster — Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan — are part of the Republic. Counties Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Tipperary have been broken up into smaller administrative areas, but are still considered by Ordnance Survey Ireland to be official counties .
The counties in Northern Ireland are no longer used for local government, although their traditional boundaries are still used in sports and in some other cultural areas. In both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the traditional 32 counties retain a strong sense of local identity.
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Physical geography
A ring of coastal mountains surrounds low central plains. The highest peak is Carrauntoohill (Irish: Corrán Tuathail) in County Kerry, which is 1,041 m (3,414 feet). The River Shannon, at 386 km (240 miles) is the longest river in Ireland.
The island's lush vegetation, a product of its mild climate and frequent but soft rainfall, earns it the sobriquet "Emerald Isle". The island's area is 84,412 km² (32,591 square miles).
Ireland's least arable land lies in the south-western and western counties. These areas are largely mountainous and rocky, with dramatic green vistas.
Political geography
The political geography of Ireland can be traced with some accuracy from the seventh century.
At that time Ireland was divided into about 150 different units of government, each one called a tuath (pl. tuatha).
A tuath was an autonomous group of people of independent political jurisdiction under a chief called sub-rege (Rí Tuaithe, tribal king. often the chief of a clan).
In the sixth century, Ireland was divided into cúigí or fifths (sing. cúige). The four current provinces of Ireland were named after four of these cúigí, Uladh (Ulster), Laighean (Leinster), Connachta (Connacht) and Mumha (Munster).
The fifth cúige, Mídh (Meath), corresponded to the present-day counties of Meath, Westmeath, Longford and Offaly in present-day Leinster (Louth was considered to be part of Ulster).
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National Symbol, officially registered on 9 November 1945. |
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In bardic lore, the "fifths of Ireland" corresponded to the five provinces: learning was in the west, war in the north, wealth in the east, music or art in the south and kingship in the centre (Meath). In the 12th century, the Kings of England began their first of many invasions (commonly referred to in Ireland as the Norman Invasion).
The English governed Ireland in a like structure as they did themselves, by dividing the country into shires or counties in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
To correspond with the subdivisions of the English shires into honors or baronies, Irish counties were granted out to the Anglo-Norman noblemen in cantreds, later known as baronies, which in turn were subdivided, as in England, into manors or townlands.
(However, in many cases, both baronies and townlands correspond to earlier, pre-Norman, divisions.) While there are 331 baronies in Ireland, divided first into civil parishes, there are around 60,000 townlands that range in size from one to several thousand acres. Townlands were often traditionally divided into smaller units called quarters, but these subdivisions are not legally defined.
The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 was a significant milestone in the framing of the counties and their status.
Former Counties
Former counties include: County Coleraine which formed the basis of County Londonderry, and Nether and Upper Tyrone which were merged, and Desmond which was split between Counties Cork and Kerry.
Other names seen on old maps include Caterlaugh or Caterlagh, archaic designations of County Carlow, in the days before much of the north of that county was taken into Wicklow.
In 1777, the ancient Norman town of Carrickfergus lost its status of county town, there was formerly a county of Carrickfergus which extended further than the modern borough of Carrickfergus. County Tipperary was split into North and South Ridings in 1838.
More recently, in 1994, County Dublin was split into Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin. |
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