In my view the position of the UK Government should come before that of Irish nationalists and quoting the web site of Sinn Fein until fairly recently the political wing of a terrorist group is completely unacceptable to me as well as unnecessary I would propose to tweak the text as follows A country is usually considered to be a sovereign state or more broadly the term is indicative of the autonomous nature of a territory s government see for example The Oxford English Dictionary definition of country The United Kingdom as a sovereign state is a country However by convention England Scotland and Wales have historically always been referred to as countries regardless of their precise constitutional arrangements The British government as in the Prime Minister s website and other sources often refer to Northern Ireland as a country to reflect its existence as a parallel entity to England Scotland and Wales For further information see Country Terminology of the British Isles and Constituent country United Kingdom For this reason the British Prime Minister s website has in the past used the phrase countries within a country to describe the United Kingdom With regard to Northern Ireland the descriptive of country can be controversial with the choice often revealing one s political preferences and terms such as region or province are preferred J Whyte and G FitzGerald 1991 Interpreting Northern Ireland Oxford University Press Oxford