Portal:Northern Ireland


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...)

Selected article -

A stone circle at Beaghmore County Tyrone on a sunny day.
A stone circle at Beaghmore.

Beaghmore is a complex of early Bronze Age megalithic features, stone circles and cairns, 8.5 miles north west of Cookstown, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, on the south-east edge of the Sperrin Mountains.

Mackay's Dictionary of Ulster Place-names says that it is from Irish an Bheitheach Mhór, meaning "big place of birch trees", a name that reflects the fact that the area was a woodland before being cleared by Neolithic farmers. (Full article...)

Selected picture -

Northern Ireland lists

Selected biography -

O'Neill in 2025

Michelle O'Neill (née Doris; born 10 January 1977) is an Irish politician who has been First Minister of Northern Ireland since February 2024 and Vice President of Sinn Féin since 2018. She has also been the MLA for Mid Ulster in the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2007. O'Neill was previously deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2020 to 2022. O'Neill served on the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council from 2005 to 2011.

In 2007, she was elected to represent Mid Ulster in the Northern Ireland Assembly. She served as the first female Mayor of Dungannon and South Tyrone from 2010 to 2011. She has been serving as Vice President of Sinn Féin since 2018. In 2011, she was appointed to the Northern Ireland Executive by deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness as Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development. In 2016, she was promoted to Minister of Health. In January 2020, she became deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland after the New Decade, New Approach agreement restored the power-sharing executive. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

WikiProjects

WikiProjects
  • WikiProject Northern Ireland
  • WikiProject Belfast
  • WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies
  • WikiProject UK geography
  • WikiProject Unionism

Things you can do


Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
  • Stubs : Expand Northern Ireland stub articles
  • Other : Please visit the Northern Irish Wikipedians' notice board and help to write new Northern Ireland-related articles, and expand and improve existing ones

Topics

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland-related lists
Buildings and structures in Northern Ireland
Economy of Northern Ireland
Environment of Northern Ireland
Geography of Northern Ireland
Government of Northern Ireland
Health in Northern Ireland
History of Northern Ireland
Landmarks in Northern Ireland
Military of Northern Ireland
Open-air museums in Northern Ireland
Organisations based in Northern Ireland
People from Northern Ireland
Politics of Northern Ireland
Religion in Northern Ireland
Science and technology in Northern Ireland
Society of Northern Ireland
Tourist attractions in Northern Ireland
Transport in Northern Ireland
Works about Northern Ireland
Images of Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland stubs

Recognized Content

Good articles

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

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.

Web resources

Discover Wikipedia using portals