Portal:Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland Portal

Introduction

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Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares an open border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. At the 2021 census, its population was 1,903,175, making up around 3% of the UK's population and 27% of the population on the island of Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly, established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998, holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the UK Government. The government of Northern Ireland cooperates with the government of Ireland in several areas under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. The Republic of Ireland also has a consultative role on non-devolved governmental matters through the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference.

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

The creation of Northern Ireland was marred by violence between those for and against partition. During The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922), the capital Belfast saw major communal violence, mainly between Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist civilians. More than 500 were killed and more than 10,000 became refugees, mostly Catholics. For the next fifty years, Northern Ireland had an unbroken series of Unionist Party governments. There was informal mutual segregation by both communities, and the Unionist governments were accused of discrimination against the Irish nationalist and Catholic minority. In the late 1960s, a campaign to end discrimination against Catholics and nationalists was opposed by loyalists, who saw it as a republican front. This unrest sparked the Troubles, a thirty-year conflict involving republican and loyalist paramilitaries and state forces, which claimed over 3,500 lives and injured 50,000 others. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was a major step in the peace process, including paramilitary disarmament and security normalisation, although sectarianism and segregation remain major social problems, and sporadic violence has continued. (Full article...)

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An election for the Northern Ireland Assembly was held on 5 May 2022. It elected 90 members. It was the seventh assembly election since the establishment of the assembly in 1998. The election was held three months after the Northern Ireland Executive collapsed due to the resignation of the First Minister, Paul Givan of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol.

In the sixth assembly, elected in 2017, eight parties had Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs): the DUP, latterly led by Jeffrey Donaldson; Sinn Féin, led by Michelle O'Neill; the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), latterly led by Doug Beattie; the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), led by Colum Eastwood; Alliance, led by Naomi Long; the Greens, led by Clare Bailey; People Before Profit (PBP), which has a collective leadership; and the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), led by Jim Allister. (Full article...)

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Image 1The walled garden at Rowallane Garden, a National Trust property located immediately south of Saintfield, County Down, Northern Ireland
Image 2The RMS Titanic ready for launch, 1911
Image 3Castle Ward is an 18th-century National Trust property located near the village of Strangford, in County Down, Northern Ireland, in the townland of the same name.
Image 4Belfast City Hall under construction in 1901
Image 5A relief map of Northern Ireland
Image 6The Ulster fry is a part of Northern Irish cuisine
Image 7A view of Hill Street in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland in 1902
Image 8A view of Giant's Causeway
Image 9Harland & Wolff's Belfast drawing offices early in the 20th century
Image 10Enniskillen Castle in Enniskillen was originally built in the 16th century and now houses the Fermanagh County Museum and the regimental museum of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards.
Image 11A view of Royal Avenue, Belfast, between circa 1890 and circa 1900
Image 12St Colmcille's church in Holywood, a town in the metropolitan area of Belfast in County Down, Northern Ireland
Image 13Bittles Bar in Belfast

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Branagh in 2026

Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh (/ˈbrænə/ BRAN-ə; born 10 December 1960) is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Branagh trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was knighted in 2012, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

Branagh has directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), and As You Like It (2006). He was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet. He directed Swan Song (1992), which earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He also directed Dead Again (1991), Peter's Friends (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Thor (2011), and Cinderella (2015). For his semi-autobiographical film Belfast (2021), he was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and won Best Original Screenplay. (Full article...)

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... that a particularly violent period during the Troubles led to fears of Northern Ireland descending into civil war?
... that the ecclesiastical site at Devenish Island was among the first protected monuments in the United Kingdom?
... that a Northern Irish playwright had to supplement her income by making jewellery despite winning a US$150,000 literature prize?
... that Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland have mistakenly burned the flag of Ivory Coast instead of the flag of Ireland?
... that future actress Emily Flain supplied a shortlisted name for a new housing development in Northern Ireland while she was in primary school?
... that the headquarters of the Northern Ireland Prison Service were breached by protestors in 2003?

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Northern Ireland on Wikipedia

Northern Ireland is in the top 250 most referenced articles. It ranks 232nd, with 3,955 links to it - one more link than Music, and many more links than the Bible.
Besides English, the Northern Ireland article has been translated to 44 other languages.

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