Is ireland made up mostly of catholics or protestants? know any good sites for info on ireland?

Question

anyone know of any good sites that'll give me information on the history of ireland? i'm doing a school research project on the conflicts between northern and southern ireland. i'm not allowed to use wikepidia, because i'm not allowed to cite it and it's not reiable. help please!!!!

Answer 1

catholics. When you go up the north, more protestants

Answer 2

I was going to write an answer but haggesitze did it better

Answer 3

Well a good start would be to realise that the conflict in Ireland has never been between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (formally know as The Irish Free State).  

As regards catholics and Protestants it depend s again if you are looking at NI RoI or the island as a whole.  

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_repor...

This is from the BBC's website and is very reliable and if you search within the site you will be able to find religion figures etc.

http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/his...

This site seems pretty balanced and will give you a brief overview in the section called Conflict.

http://www.sluggerotoole.com/

This is a well respected blog about the current situation but it may be a bit to specialist for your needs.

Good luck with your project-pretty mean of your teacher not to let you use wikipedia-but spare a thought for those of us that had to do projects before Google!!

Answer 4

There is no conflict between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland forMERly known as the "Free State".

The Northern Irish conflict is portrayed as a religious one, although it is really the old tribal war between Anglosaxons and Celts. The one crowd call themselves "Republicans" or "Nationalists" because they want the island reunited, the other ones are the "Unionists" or "Loyalists" because they stand loyal to the English crown. Religion is only the best and handiest thing to keep the conflict going.

The problems we are still dealing with today stem largely from the 60s when a very partisan Protestant gouvernment denied Catholics most of their civic rights, like voting, by not giving them public housing which, at that time, would have entitled them to vote. Catholics could not study in Queens University in Belfast, umemployment among male Catholics was over one third, as opposed to 7% among Protestants.

During a civil rights march in January 1968 the British troups opened fire on a peaceful demonstration in the city of (London)derry, later claiming that there had been IRA snipers in the crowd, which was never proved. 13 people were killed that day, and the recruitment effect for the terrorists was enormous. That was really when what is called "the Toubles" started. At that time Northern Ireland's Catholic population was under 40%, but it is nearly equal to the Protestant one now. Ten years ago we got the so called "Good Friday" or Belfast Agreement where the IRA renounced violence and instigated a process of decomissioning of their weapons, the Republic gave up their claim on the whole territory of the island of Ireland by a referendum that changed the Irish constitution, and the Unionists gave their consent to settting up a power sharing gouvernment where the strongest party would have their leader as "First Minister", and the second largest would have the Deputy and equal participation in gouvernment. As far as we can tell the Nationalists have kept to their part of the bargain, but the Unionists took the first good excuse to let the whole thing go down the drain.  At the moment we have an "Irish Secretary" in charge, a member of the British gouvernment. In the last elections both communities voted in their majorities for the more extreme parties, and the result is that the DUP lead by Ian Paisley refuse to talk to Sinn Fein which they make a point of calling "Sinn Fein/IRA" all the time.

The Republic used to have 10% Protestants in their population, but after all the recent immigration nobody is so sure about that any more, and nowadys and for decades it has not mattered at all in the Republic of Ireland what denomination you are belonging to.

Answer 5

In May 2004, Ireland's Catholic population was 88.4% and Protestant population was 2.5% and the rest was other...it hasn't really changed since then