paragraph_text: Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland by the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Unlike Southern Ireland, which would become the Irish Free State in 1922, the majority of Northern Ireland's population were unionists, who wanted to remain within the United Kingdom. Most of these were the Protestant descendants of colonists from Great Britain. However, a significant minority, mostly Catholics, were nationalists who wanted a united Ireland independent of British rule. Today, the former generally see themselves as British and the latter generally see themselves as Irish, while a distinct Northern Irish or Ulster identity is claimed both by a large minority of Catholics and Protestants and by many of those who are non-aligned.

paragraph_text: Ireland and the United Kingdom are both part of the European Union (EU). The Crown Dependencies are not a part of the EU however do participate in certain aspects that were negotiated as a part of the UK's accession to the EU. Neither the United Kingdom or Ireland are part of the Schengen area, that allow passport-free travel between EU members states. However, since the partition of Ireland, an informal free-travel area had existed across the region. In 1997, this area required formal recognition during the course of negotiations for the Amsterdam Treaty of the European Union and is now known as the Common Travel Area.

paragraph_text: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a sovereign country lying off the north - western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north - eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state‍ -- ‌the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to its east, the English Channel to its south and the Celtic Sea to its south - south - west, giving it the 12th - longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th - largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.

paragraph_text: This is a list of the Areas of Special Scientific Interest (ASSIs) in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

paragraph_text: The Holiday Show Ireland is an Irish travel show that first aired on TV3 in Ireland on 4 January 2013. The show sees presenters Ciara Whelan and Jon Slattery travelling to various locations throughout Ireland exploring the depths of Ireland's hidden holiday destinations.

paragraph_text: Natal Ridge is a prominent snow-free terraced ridge forming part of the north boundary of the Two Step Cliffs massif located in the southeast portion of Alexander Island, Antarctica. Named by United Kingdom Antarctic Place-Names Committee (UK-APC) in 1993 in recognition of the geomorphological and biological surveys conducted by scientists from the University of Natal in the Mars Glacier party.

paragraph_text: Ireland, the United Kingdom and the three Crown Dependencies are all parliamentary democracies, with their own separate parliaments. All parts of the United Kingdom return members to parliament in London. In addition to this, voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland return members to a parliament in Edinburgh and to assemblies in Cardiff and Belfast respectively. Governance in the norm is by majority rule, however, Northern Ireland uses a system of power sharing whereby unionists and nationalists share executive posts proportionately and where the assent of both groups are required for the Northern Ireland Assembly to make certain decisions. (In the context of Northern Ireland, unionists are those who want Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom and nationalists are those who want Northern Ireland join with the rest of Ireland.) The British monarch is the head of state for all parts of the isles except for the Republic of Ireland, where the head of state is the President of Ireland.

paragraph_text: This is a list of the Areas of Special Scientific Interest (ASSIs) in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland the body responsible for designating ASSIs is the Northern Ireland Environment Agency - a division of the Department of Environment (DoE).

paragraph_text: A further Act of Union in 1800 added the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

paragraph_text: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to the United Kingdom (abbreviation UK), is the sovereign state comprising Great Britain plus Northern Ireland since 1927. (The Partition of Ireland took place in 1922, but the consequent change in the official title of the UK was only made by Act of Parliament five years later.) The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is often shortened to Britain, even on official websites. A proposal to rename the political entity as the ``United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ulster ''was formally recommended by civil servants to the Cabinet in 1949 but ultimately rejected.

paragraph_text: In 1922, after the Irish War of Independence and the Anglo - Irish Treaty, most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom to become the independent Irish Free State, which after the 1937 constitution, began to call itself Ireland. The six northeastern counties, known as Northern Ireland, remained within the United Kingdom. The Irish Civil War followed soon after the War of Independence. The history of Northern Ireland has since been dominated by sporadic sectarian conflict between (mainly Catholic) Irish nationalists and (mainly Protestant) unionists. This conflict erupted into the Troubles in the late 1960s, until peace was achieved with the Belfast Agreement thirty years later.

paragraph_text: In accordance with the treaty, on 6 December 1922 the entire island of Ireland became a self - governing dominion called the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann). Under the Constitution of the Irish Free State, the Parliament of Northern Ireland had the option to leave the Irish Free State one month later and return to the United Kingdom. During the intervening period, the powers of the Parliament of the Irish Free State and Executive Council of the Irish Free State did not extend to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland exercised its right under the treaty to leave the new dominion and rejoined the United Kingdom on 8 December 1922. It did so by making an address to the King requesting, ``that the powers of the Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland. ''The Irish Free State was a constitutional monarchy sharing a monarch with the United Kingdom and other dominions of the British Commonwealth. The country had a governor - general (representing the monarch), a bicameral parliament, a cabinet called the`` Executive Council'', and a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council.

paragraph_text: Northern Ireland (Irish: Tuaisceart Éireann (ˈt̪ɣuəʃcəɾɣt̪ɣ ˈeːɾjən̪ɣ) (listen); Ulster - Scots: Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom in the north - east of the island of Ireland, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. In 2011, its population was 1,810,863, constituting about 30% of the island's total population and about 3% of the UK's population. Established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland Assembly holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the British government. Northern Ireland co-operates with the Republic of Ireland in some areas, and the Agreement granted the Republic the ability to ``put forward views and proposals ''with`` determined efforts to resolve disagreements between the two governments''.

paragraph_text: The British Isles are a group of islands off the north-western coast of continental Europe that consist of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. Situated in the North Atlantic, the islands have a total area of approximately 315,159 km2, and a combined population of just under 70 million. Two sovereign states are located on the islands: Ireland (which covers roughly five-sixths of the island with the same name) and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The British Isles also include three Crown Dependencies: the Isle of Man and, by tradition, the Bailiwick of Jersey and the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the Channel Islands, although the latter are not physically a part of the archipelago.

paragraph_text: The United Kingdom has traditionally been governed as a unitary state by the Westminster Parliament in London. Instead of adopting a federal model, the UK has relied on gradual devolution to decentralise political power. Devolution in the UK began with the Government of Ireland Act 1914 which granted home rule to Ireland as a constituent country of the former United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland in 1921 which saw the creation of the sovereign Irish Free State (which eventually evolved into the modern day Republic of Ireland), Northern Ireland retained its devolved government through the Parliament of Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK to have such a body at this time. This body was suspended in 1972 and Northern Ireland was governed by direct rule during the period of conflict known as The Troubles.

paragraph_text: Set in Belfast in the 1950s, "Judith Hearne" has been described as "a sensitive study of a middle-aged alcoholic woman in drab Belfast and her desperate last attempts at finding love and companionship". Ann Leary, reviewing the book for NPR, calls it "a short book about a lifetime of longing" and says "Moore uses brilliant economy in his writing; it's as if words are as scarce and precious as sunshine in this gloomy section of postwar Belfast". According to Colm Tóibín, the book "is full of Joycean moments... it takes from ‘Clay’, the most mysterious story in Dubliners, the idea of a single, middle-aged woman visiting a family and finding both comfort and humiliation there". Robert Fulford, writing in Canada's "The Globe and Mail", describes it as "a bleak post-Catholic novel" that depicts "a desolate life, stripped of warming humanity".

paragraph_text: CAMRA maintains a "National Inventory" of historical notability and of architecturally and decoratively notable pubs. The National Trust owns thirty-six public houses of historic interest including the George Inn, Southwark, London and The Crown Liquor Saloon, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

paragraph_text: There are two sovereign states in the isles: Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Ireland, sometimes called the Republic of Ireland, governs five sixths of the island of Ireland, with the remainder of the island forming Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to simply the United Kingdom, which governs the remainder of the archipelago with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The Isle of Man and the two states of the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, are known as the Crown Dependencies. They exercise constitutional rights of self-government and judicial independence; responsibility for international representation rests largely upon the UK (in consultation with the respective governments); and responsibility for defence is reserved by the UK. The United Kingdom is made up of four constituent parts: England, Scotland and Wales, forming Great Britain, and Northern Ireland in the north-east of the island of Ireland. Of these, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have "devolved" governments meaning that they have their own parliaments/assemblies and are self-governing with respect to certain areas set down by law. For judicial purposes, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales (the latter being one entity) form separate legal jurisdiction, with there being no single law for the UK as a whole.

paragraph_text: Judith Bishop was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1972. She holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, an MFA in Writing from Washington University in St Louis and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Melbourne. In 1994 she received the Rae and Edith Bennett Travelling Scholarship for postgraduate study in the United Kingdom. Her MPhil thesis at Cambridge treated the poetry of Yves Bonnefoy

paragraph_text: Unwilling to negotiate any understanding with Britain short of complete independence, the Irish Republican Army, the army of the newly declared Irish Republic, waged a guerilla war (the Irish War of Independence) from 1919 to 1921. In the course of the fighting and amid much acrimony, the Fourth Government of Ireland Act 1920 implemented Home Rule while separating the island into what the British government's Act termed ``Northern Ireland ''and`` Southern Ireland''. In July 1921 the Irish and British governments agreed to a truce that halted the war. In December 1921 representatives of both governments signed an Anglo - Irish Treaty. The Irish delegation was led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. This abolished the Irish Republic and created the Irish Free State, a self - governing Dominion of the Commonwealth of Nations in the manner of Canada and Australia. Under the Treaty, Northern Ireland could opt out of the Free State and stay within the United Kingdom: it promptly did so. In 1922 both parliaments ratified the Treaty, formalising independence for the 26 - county Irish Free State (which renamed itself Ireland in 1937, and declared itself a republic in 1949); while the 6 - county Northern Ireland, gaining Home Rule for itself, remained part of the United Kingdom. For most of the next 75 years, each territory was strongly aligned to either Catholic or Protestant ideologies, although this was more marked in the six counties of Northern Ireland.

Question: When were travel restrictions relaxed between Ireland and the country where the book Judith Hearne is set?
Answer: 1997