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Ireland is the third largest island in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and to the west of Great Britain. Politically, the state Ireland, sometimes described as the Republic of Ireland,
covers five-sixths of the island, with Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, covering the remainder in the north-east. The first settlements in Ireland date from 8000 BC. By 200 BC Celtic migration and influence had come to dominate the
island. Relatively small scale settlement by both the Vikings and Normans in the Middle Ages gave way to complete English domination by the 1600s. Protestant English rule resulted in the marginalisation of the Catholic majority. A famine in the mid-1800s
caused deaths and emigration. Following a war of independence, Ireland was split into: the independent Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, which remains a part of the United Kingdom. The Free State left the Commonwealth to become a Republic in 1949. In
1973 both parts of Ireland joined the European Economic Community. Sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland led to much unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s, which subsided following a peace deal in 1998. The population of the island is slightly
under 6 million (2006), with 4.2 million in the Republic of Ireland[3] and an estimated almost 1.75 million in Northern Ireland. This is a significant increase from a modern historical low in the 1960s, but still much lower than the peak population of
over 8 million in the early 19th century, prior to the Great Famine. The name Ireland derives from the name of the Celtic goddess Ériu (in modern Irish, Éire) with the addition of the Germanic word land. Most other western European names for Ireland, such
as French Irlande, derive from the same source.
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