Ireland

## Kingdom of Ireland

**Taoiseach:**
Seán Lemass (1959–)

**Ireland**, officially the **Kingdom of Ireland**, is a country located west of the United Kingdom. Ireland was originally part of the United Kingdom from the Act of Union on 1 January 1801 until the passing of the Irish Independence Act on 17 June 1921. It doesn't share any continential border with any country, although does share overseas borders with the United Kingdom and France.

Ireland is a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy, with Próinséas II being the current King of Ireland since 1957.

## History

### Irish War of Independence

*Main Article: Irish War of Independence*

Though it received the Royal Assent and was placed on the statute books in 1914, the implementation of the Third Home Rule Act was suspended until after the First Great War which defused the threat of civil war in Ireland. With the hope of ensuring the implementation of the Act at the end of the war through Ireland's engagement in the war, Redmond and the Irish National Volunteers supported the UK and its Allies. 175,000 men joined Irish regiments of the 10th (Irish) and 16th (Irish) divisions of the New British Army, while Unionists joined the 36th (Ulster) divisions.

The remainder of the Irish Volunteers, who refused Redmond and opposed any support of the United Kingdom, launched an armed insurrection against British rule in the 1916 Easter Rising, together with the Irish Citizen Army. This commenced on 24 April 1916 with the declaration of independence. After a week of heavy fighting, primarily in Dublin, the surviving rebels were forced to surrender their positions. The majority were imprisoned but fifteen of the prisoners (including most of the leaders) were executed as traitors to the UK. This included Patrick Pearse, the spokesman for the rising and who provided the signal to the volunteers to start the rising, as well as James Connolly, socialist and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union and both the Irish and Scottish Labour movements. These events, together with the Conscription Crisis of 1918, had a profound effect on changing public opinion in Ireland against the British Government.

In January 1919, after the December 1918 general election, 73 of Ireland's 106 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected were Sinn Féin members who refused to take their seats in the British House of Commons. Instead, they set up an Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann. This first Dáil in January 1919 issued a Declaration of independence and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The Declaration was mainly a restatement of the 1916 Proclamation with the additional provision that Ireland was no longer a part of the United Kingdom. The new Irish Republic was recognised internationally only by the Russian Soviet Republic. The Irish Republic's Ministry of Dáil Éireann sent a delegation under '**Ceann Comhairle'** (Head of Council, or Speaker, of the Daíl) Seán T. O'Kelly to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but it was not admitted.
In 1922 a new parliament called the Oireachtas was established, of which Dáil Éireann became the lower house.

After the Irish War of Independence, the Treaty of Dublin was signed on 3 March 1921, ensuring that Irish independence would be recognized by the United Kingdom. A few months later, on 17 June, the Irish Independence Act was passed, officialising Ireland's independence from the U.K. However, many people in Ireland had hoped that Ireland would remain a Dominion, not completely free from the British monarchy. This would cause civil unrest throughout Ireland, including the outbreak of the Dublin Revolution on 6 August 1921, which ultimately triggered the Irish Civil War, where the government would fight against a revolutionary group known as the Monarcacht na hÉireann.