Ireland » History

Recent History

By the late 1990s the Republic's booming economy led it to being monikered the Celtic Tiger. It's been said that Ireland has skipped straight from an agricultural economy to a post-industrial one, as large computer and telecommunications firms moved in, bringing jobs and investment. The economy did slow down between 2000 and 2003, when unemployment grew and the already high cost of living continued to rise.

The twice re-elected (most recently in May 2007) coalition government led by Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern has steered the nation back into the black and Ireland's economy is once more amongst the healthiest in the EU. Economic growth has created challenges such as increased immigration and pressure on Ireland's welfare and transport infrastructure but overall the Celtic Tiger is purring like a kitten once more.

After years of tortuous negotiations, setbacks and mistrust, Northern Ireland seems to have finally reached the end of the 'Troubles'. Following years of equivocating on the issues of de-commissioning its arsenal and renouncing violence, the IRA turned in its guns and ended its armed campaign in mid-2005. Five years of direct rule from London ended when elections for the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly government were successfully held in March 2007.

Despite the electorate being drawn away from the moderate Republican and Unionist parties towards the more hard-line policies of Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a power-sharing agreement was successfully instituted in May 2007. The sight of long-time adversaries the DUP's Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, standing together at Stormont to be sworn in as first minister and deputy was the most definitive indication yet that peace was at last a possibility in the North.

Longer Historical Perspective

The History of Ireland began with the first known human settlement in Ireland around 8000 BC, when hunter-gatherers arrived from Britain and continental Europe. Few archaeological traces remain of this group, but their descendants and later Neolithic arrivals, particularly from the Iberian Peninsula, were responsible for major Neolithic sites such as New grange. Following the arrival of Saint Patrick and other Christian missionaries in the early to mid-5th century, Christianity subsumed the indigenous pagan religion by the year 600.

From around 800, more than a century of Viking invasions wrought havoc upon the monastic culture and on the island's various regional dynasties. The coming of Anglo-Norman mercenaries under, nicknamed Strong bow, in 1169 marked the beginning of more than 800 years of direct English involvement in Ireland. The English crown did not begin asserting full control of the island until after the English Reformation, when questions over the loyalty of Irish vassals provided the initial impetus for a series of military campaigns between 1534 and 1691. This period was also marked by an official English policy of plantation, which led to the arrival of thousands of English and Scottish Protestant settlers.

Throughout this period, Ireland regained a form of self-governing status through the Parliament of Ireland, but power was limited to the Anglo-Irish. In 1801, this parliament was abolished and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. In 1922, after the Irish War of Independence, the southern twenty-six counties of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom (UK) to become the independent Irish Free State and after 1948, the Republic of Ireland. The history of Northern Ireland has been dominated by sporadic sectarian conflict between (mainly Catholic) Nationalists and (mainly Protestant) Unionists. This conflict erupted into the Troubles in the late 1960s, until an uneasy peace thirty years later.

During the 1970s British policy concentrated on defeating the Provisional Irish Republican (IRA) by military means including the policy of Ulsterisation. In the 1980s the IRA attempted to secure a decisive military victory based on massive arms shipments from Libya. When this failed, the senior republican figures began to look to broaden the struggle from purely military means. In 1986 the British and Irish governments signed the Anglo Irish Agreement signalling a formal partnership in seeking a political solution. Socially and economically Northern Ireland suffered the worst levels of unemployment in the UK and although high levels of public spending ensured a slow modernisation of public services and moves towards equality, progress was slow in the 1970s and 1980s.