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Portal:Northern Ireland

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The Northern Ireland Portal

Introduction

Location of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom
Northern Ireland borders the Republic of Ireland to its south and west.

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...)

A car bombing took place in the town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland on 15 August 1998. It was carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army (Real IRA), a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group who opposed the IRA's ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement, signed earlier in the year. The bombing killed 29 people and injured about 220 others, making it the deadliest incident of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the second deadliest incident of the conflict overall after the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974. Telephoned warnings which did not specify the location had been sent almost forty minutes beforehand, and police inadvertently moved people towards the bomb.

The bombing caused outrage both locally and internationally, spurred on the Northern Ireland peace process, and dealt a severe blow to the dissident Irish republican campaign. The Real IRA denied that the bomb was intended to kill civilians and apologised; shortly after, the group declared a ceasefire. The victims included people of many backgrounds and ages: Protestants, Catholics, six teenagers, six children, a woman pregnant with twins, two Spanish tourists and others on a day trip from the Republic of Ireland. Both unionists and Irish nationalists were killed and injured. As a result of the bombing, new anti-terrorism laws were swiftly enacted by the United Kingdom and Ireland. (Full article...)

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McIlroy at the 2025 Ryder Cup

Rory Daniel McIlroy (born 4 May 1989) is a Northern Irish professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour and the European Tour. He is a former world number one in the Official World Golf Ranking and has spent over 100 weeks in that position during his career. A six-time major champion, he is the sixth man to complete the modern career grand slam—after Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods—and the first European to do so.

McIlroy reached number one in the World Amateur Golf Ranking in 2007 and turned professional later that year. He won his first major championship at the 2011 U.S. Open and rose to number one in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2012. By age 25, McIlroy had won three more majors: the 2012 and 2014 PGA Championship and the 2014 Open Championship. In 2022, he became the first person to win the FedEx Cup three times. McIlroy won The Players Championship in 2019 and 2025. After a ten-year drought in the majors, he won his fifth at the 2025 Masters Tournament to complete the career grand slam; he added a second consecutive Masters in 2026. (Full article...)

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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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