According to ehistorylib, in 2005, Ireland had a population of just over 4 million people and a GDP of $149 billion. The economy was largely based on services, with the largest sectors being finance, technology, and tourism. Unemployment rates were low at around 4%, while poverty levels remained quite low with an estimated 6% of the population living below the poverty line.
Foreign relations in 2005 were generally positive with Ireland being a member of the European Union as well as various international organizations such as the United Nations and NATO. Ireland maintained diplomatic ties with many countries in Europe, North America, and Asia. In addition, Ireland sought to improve its regional influence through increased economic ties with other European nations.
Politically, Ireland was a constitutional republic during this time period with executive power vested in the President who was elected by popular vote every seven years. The President had authority over foreign policy decisions and could veto any legislation passed by Parliament. Furthermore, there were three branches of government: Executive (President), Legislative (Parliament) and Judicial (Supreme Court). These branches worked together to ensure that laws were properly enforced throughout the country.
In terms of history and culture, the island must be recognized throughout the world as a great power with its writers and musicians. Irish music plays happily everywhere and good humor also catches the tourist.
The border town of Londonderry has in recent years become a popular city of culture. Perhaps best of all, the essence of this small, large island crystallizes in Dublin, by a pint of Guinness.
Yearbook 2005
Ireland. According to countryaah, Dublin is the capital and one of the major cities within the country of Ireland. Former Prime Minister Ray Burke was sentenced in January to six months in prison for failing to declare income equivalent to € 147,000 in 1993. Burke, who belonged to the Fianna Fáil government party, was appointed Foreign Minister in 1997, even though there were already suspicions that he had committed financial irregularities.
- Also see abbreviationfinder.org for how the acronym IE stands for the country of Ireland and other meanings of this two-letter abbreviation.
In October, a government report drew sharp criticism of police and Catholic bishops in a Diocese of County Wexford for how they handled sexual abuse of children as priests committed during the period 1966-2002.
In response to the Provisional IRA’s actions, Protestants in Northern Ireland set up a number of paramilitary organizations, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defense Association (UDA). During the period 1969-94, 3,000 were killed by paramilitary groups on both sides, the British Army, the Ulster Police Forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) – another police force. In 1972 the paramilitary prisoners were called political prisoners, but from 1976 this name was again canceled.
The ever-increasing violence led London to take full responsibility for “the creation of law and order in Northern Ireland”. The government of Belfast was dissolved and a direct government from Westminster was introduced. In a referendum conducted in March 1973, 60% voted in favor of a continued union with Britain. (See UK). In late 1973, a form of parliament was created in Belfast, where Protestants and Catholics allegedly shared power.
The agreement reached in December between the London and Dublin governments on the establishment of a Council of Ireland and a Northern Irish government encountered fierce opposition among the Protestants, who in 1974 conducted a general strike, culminating in the state of emergency and the dissolution of the government. London again assumed government responsibility but retained the Northern Irish Parliament.
In Ireland, the nationalist conservative Fianna Fáil party had been in power for 44 years, when it was beaten by a coalition consisting of the Conservative Fine Gael and the Labor Party in the 1973 elections. The coalition declared its willingness to conduct a division of power with Ulster.
After the IRA assassinated the British ambassador to Ireland in 1976, Northern Ireland tightened its funds against terrorism. At the 1977 election, Fianna Fáil regained power and maintained good relations with London. Prime Minister Jack Lynch supported the formation of a local government in the north rather than requiring mergers between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
In August 1979, Dublin agreed to increase border control after Lord Mountbatten was killed in Ireland and 18 British soldiers were killed in Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland. In December, Lynch resigned from the Prime Minister’s post and was replaced by former Minister Charles Haughey, who again raised the issue of reunification but with some form of autonomy for Ulster.
Regular ministerial meetings between England and Ireland culminated in 1985 with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It allowed the Irish Government to intervene in the political, legal, security and border conditions in Northern Ireland. The majority of Protestants in the north expressed great dissatisfaction with the agreement, but it also stated that Northern Ireland’s affiliation could only be decided by its own residents.
The birth of the Free State of Ireland
In the first half of the sixteenth century England attempted to impose the Anglican Church and Protestantism on Ireland. Catholicism then became an essential element of Irish identity and in this context the conflicts between the two sides increased in intensity. In 1800, with the Act of Union, Ireland was formally united with Great Britain and the Irish parliament itself was suppressed. These measures added to the harsh living conditions of many Irish, oppressed by a minority of large English and Protestant landowners whom the crown had forcibly installed in Ireland, particularly in the north-eastern regions, since the second half of the 16th century. of the island. In the second half of the nineteenth century the situation began to change: on the one hand, for the growing activism of Irish nationalists, who created the Sinn Féin (“ourselves”) party in 1905; on the other hand, thanks to the initiative of the British government itself which, with Prime Minister William E. Gladstone, endeavored to introduce the home rule, self-government, approved only in 1910. The outbreak of the First World War, however, caused its application to be suspended and indeed laid the foundations for a new cycle of violence in which the IRA (Irish Republican Army “Irish Republican Army”). Eventually, between 1920 and 1921, a compromise solution was reached. Ireland was divided into two parts: six of the nine counties of Ulster, located in the north and mostly Protestant (but with a sizeable Catholic minority), continued to be part of the Kingdom of Great Britain; the rest of the country, predominantly Catholic, instead gained independence within the Commonwealth and assumed the name of the Free State of Ireland.
