Portal:Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland Portal

Introduction

Northern Ireland borders the Republic of Ireland to its south and west.

P:NIRP:NIR

Northern Ireland (Irish: Tuaisceart Éireann [ˈt̪ˠuəʃcəɾˠt̪ˠ ˈeːɾʲən̪ˠ] ^ⓘ; Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlann) 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 Governmental Conference (BIIG).

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 accompanied by violence both in defence of 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...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article - show another

Northern Ireland (dark green) within the United Kingdom (light green)

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in Northern Ireland enjoy most of the same rights as non-LGBTQ people. However, the advancement of LGBTQ rights has traditionally been slower than the rest of the United Kingdom, with the region having lagged behind England, Scotland, and Wales. Northern Ireland was the last part of the United Kingdom where same-sex sexual activity was decriminalised, the last to liberalise blood donation policy for men who have sex with men and, after intervention by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the last to allow same-sex marriage. Compared to the neighbouring Republic of Ireland, all major LGBT rights milestones had been reached earlier in Northern Ireland, with the exception of same-sex marriage. Homosexuality was decriminalised in Northern Ireland a decade earlier and civil partnerships were introduced six years earlier.

Most liberalisation of LGBT rights in Northern Ireland has been achieved under direct rule by the Government of the United Kingdom, British parliamentary legislation or court decisions rather than through laws passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly. This is due to the veto power exercised by opponents of LGBT rights, such as the Democratic Unionist Party, under Northern Ireland's power-sharing system. In 2017, ILGA rated Northern Ireland last place in the United Kingdom for LGBT people, with 74% equality of rights compared to 86% LGBT equality in the United Kingdom overall and 92% equality in Scotland, but above the Republic of Ireland which was ranked 52% the same year. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Selected picture - show another

Image 1Belfast City Hall under construction in 1901
Image 2The Ulster fry is a part of Northern Irish cuisine
Image 3The RMS Titanic ready for launch, 1911
Image 4A view of Royal Avenue, Belfast, between circa 1890 and circa 1900
Image 5Harland & Wolff's Belfast drawing offices early in the 20th century
Image 6A view of Giant's Causeway
Image 7Bittles Bar in Belfast
Image 8A view of Hill Street in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland in 1902
Image 9A relief map of Northern Ireland
Image 10The walled garden at Rowallane Garden, a National Trust property located immediately south of Saintfield, County Down, Northern Ireland
Image 11St Colmcille's church in Holywood, a town in the metropolitan area of Belfast in County Down, Northern Ireland
Image 12Castle 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 13Enniskillen 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.

edit

Northern Ireland lists

More Northern Ireland lists...

edit

Related portals

Selected biography - show another

O'Neill in 2024

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...)

List of selected biographies
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin Kenneth Branagh Eddie Irvine David Ervine C. S. Lewis James Nesbitt Derek Dougan James White (author) Lee McEvilly Michael Ingham (footballer) Seamus Heaney Sinéad Morrissey Brian Friel Bob Shaw Ian McElhinney George Best Ian Paisley Paddy Bradley Stephen McKeag Mairead Maguire Robert McConnell (loyalist) Rory McIlroy Robin Jackson Lyra McKee Nadine Coyle

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that after visiting Hungary in 2015, members of Action Deaf Youth headed to Stormont to demand better sign language support in Northern Ireland?
... that despite being the first women's football team in Northern Ireland to sign players on professional contracts, Cliftonville Ladies F.C. were not the first club to register them?
... that the Irish N53 road from Dundalk to Castleblayney has a 6-kilometre (3.7 mi) gap where it enters Northern Ireland?
... that the headquarters of the Northern Ireland Prison Service were breached by protestors in 2003?

edit

WikiProjects

edit

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

edit

Topics

edit

Recognized Content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Northern Ireland}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.

Featured articles

Good articles

Featured lists

List of international goals scored by David Healy

edit

Associated Wikimedia

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

Commons
Free media repository
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals
Wikidata
Free knowledge base
Wikinews
Free-content news
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations
Wikisource
Free-content library
Wikispecies
Directory of species
Wikiversity
Free learning tools
Wikivoyage
Free travel guide
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus

edit

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.

edit