The Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na h'Éireann)

The Irish language (Erse) belongs to a branch of Celtic language. Historical circumstances have led to the decline of the Irish language, and its replacement in common speech by English. In the Republic of Ireland it is the first language, and in 1922 became compulsory in schools. In many national schools, all subjects are taught in Irish, though the number of children whose home language is Irish is less than 2%. Literature: Ireland has produced some of the greatest writers of the English language. Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels; age of reason), George Bernard Shaw (finder of modern drama), James Joyce and W. B. Yeats (poet, he took opium), O.Wilde - Irish contribution to British literature.

Formerly densely forested, the island was practically denuded of tree cover in the 17th century and only now is a state-sponsored re-afforestation programme beginning to restore this component of the native ecology. The native flora are essentially temperate zone, though extreme oceanic and even tropical species can be found in the south-west, with arctic alpine hangovers from the Ice Age and Mediterranean species at the extreme northern edge of their habitat found in the Burren area on the west coast.
The earliest settlers arrived in the mesolithic period, around 7,000 BC, probably immigrating from northern Britain, and these hunters were joined, in some cases replaced, by farmers and herdsmen around 3,000BC. Since then Ireland has been primarily an agricultural country. Successive waves of invaders and settlers have been more or less absorbed into the human ecology of the island, creating a rich gene pool in which the predominance of the Celts, who arrived as early as the 6th century BC, is marked.
Christianity arrived in Ireland in the 5th century AD, from which period also we date the first written documents. Irish Christianity in its early period achieved an almost symbiotic affinity with the pagan culture of the island, giving the early church a distinctive, some might now say an heretical, character. Early Ireland was never united politically, though 150 or so minor kingdoms shared a common culture.