St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin 2007

Population

Ireland has a population of about 6.1 million people. The average population density of Ireland is about 60 people per square km. In the Republic there are 4.3 million people, and in Northern Ireland there is 1.8 million people. Dublin is the biggest city by far, with a population of 1.7 million in the Greater Dublin Area. Next comes Belfast with just above 0.5 million, then Cork, Limerick, Derry, Galway, Waterford and so on. Ireland's population is only half as much as it was in 1841, before the famine, but it is growing steadily and is predicted to reach that population by 2050.

Ireland is made up of mostly pure Irish. Although there are large numbers of groups coming from outside Ireland. The biggest minority is Britons. There around 400,000 Britons in Ireland up to around 5% of the population. Next there is Polish (200,000), then Lithuanians (115,000), Chinese (50,000),Nigerians (30,000) Germans (20,000), Latvians (15,000), Americans (10,000), and lots more. They now make up 10% of Ireland's population, twice as much as Portugal. Ireland is now considered a popular place to live. So good that Irish descendants are finally coming home.

Religion

Ever since the English settled in Ireland, there has been a war between the 2 main religions: Catholics and Protestants. This had a big effect on Ireland. In the late 1960s, the Catholics (also known as the Republicans) formed together then the, Irish Army, the IRA (Irish Republican Army) advanced to Northern Ireland, were most of the Protestants (a.k.a. Unionists) lived. There then rose a number of terrorist attacks throughout the 1970s, on of the worst the terrorist attack called "Bloody Sunday". These terrorist attacks contiued and reached its peak in the 1980s. It was so bad that Northern Ireland was recognized throughout the world as what would now be Iraq. So many terrorist attacks continued that people were not aloud into Northern Ireland. It continued throughout the 1990s and one major incident in Omagh when the bomb in 1998 killed over 30 people. Finally, in 1999, an agreement in Belfast was signed to ease the relations between the North and South. So basically, the terrorist attacks, known in Ireland and abroad as "The Troubles", came to an end. But the IRA refused to disarm. However, in 2005, the IRA disarmed.
In Ireland, there are mainly Roman Catholics, in the ROI about 88%. But there are Protestants, Church of Ireland, Angelican, and a small number of Jews and Islam.