On the occasion of my son finishing a semester away at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, our family traveled to visit him and see sights in Ireland, and since it was close, England and Wales as well.
* After previous raids by Vikings and earlier kings failed, the English Normans came to rule Ireland with an iron fist for about 800 years and have ruled Wales from the late 1200s (Castle Conway was built by a Norman King of England in 1282) until the present. For most of the time since then, these linguistically and culturally Celtic people were second class citizens in their own countries.
After all this time, both the English and the Welsh deeply resent this period. Particularly resented were efforts by Norman landlords and then by Victorian era public schools to eradicate Irish Gaelic and the Welsh language, the seizure of lands from the Irish and Welsh people, and the indifference of the English to the Irish potato famine.
Irish Gaelic is a mandatory subject now in public schools in the Republic of Ireland and is present on all public signs. The Welsh language is resurgent in Wales where it is a mandatory subject in public schools (in the North with Welsh as the primary language of instruction) with about 30% of the population (more than 800,000 people) who either speak it as a first language (which is common among the very old and among young people in Northern Wales) by people who are mostly bilingual with English (but may reach for an English word or two now and then) or as a fluent second language. The Republic of Ireland, of course, is now an independent country within the European Union, Northern Ireland is now an almost fully self-governing region within the United Kingdom, and Wales, while subject to generally applicable English laws, also has its own regional government. There is a community of several thousand Welsh speakers in Argentina. All signs in Wales are bilingual (and short on recognizable vowels, in part, because Y and W and some double consonant letters in Welsh are vowels). Welsh has been attested in writing since before Anglo-Saxon was.
The Republic of Ireland gained independence in its current territory formally in December of 1922 by an Anglo-Irish Treaty entered into a year earlier to end the Irish War of Independence starting in 1919 that lasted two and a half years, although in terms of national identity and consciousness, the most formative and pivotal event in the history of the modern Republic of Ireland is the Easter Uprising of 1916. There was an off again, on again military insurgency in Northern Ireland from about 1956-1997 but the Belfast Agreement also known as the Good Friday Agreement or Good Friday Accords was reached in 1998 together with subsequent agreements and legislation effectively ended the insurgency led by Catholics pushing to unite the island of Ireland into a single country.
Northern Ireland is much less racially and ethnically diverse than the rest of Ireland (although like the Republic of Ireland. most of its non-native Irish population has arrived only recently). It is only slightly more Protestant than Catholic, and has strong geographic differentiation in terms of religious affiliation. Per Wikipedia:
The population of Northern Ireland has risen yearly since 1978. The population in 2011 was 1.8 million, having grown 7.5% over the previous decade from just under 1.7 million in 2001. This constitutes just under 3% of the population of the UK (62 million) and just over 28% of the population of the island of Ireland (6.3 million). The population density is 132 inhabitants / km2. Most of the population of Northern Ireland lives concentrated in its five largest cities: Belfast (capital), Derry, Lisburn, Newtownabbey and Bangor.
The population of Northern Ireland is almost entirely white (98.2%). In 2011, 88.8% of the population were born in Northern Ireland, with 4.5% born elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and 2.9% born in the Republic of Ireland. 4.3% were born elsewhere; triple the amount there were in 2001. Most are from Eastern Europe. The largest non-white ethnic groups were Chinese (6,300) and Indian (6,200). Black people of various origins made up 0.2% of the 2011 population and people of mixed ethnicity also made up 0.2%.
At the 2011 census, 41.5% of the population identified as Protestant/non-Roman Catholic Christian, 41% as Roman Catholic, and 0.8% as non-Christian, while 17% identified with no religion or did not state one. The biggest of the Protestant/non-Roman Catholic Christian denominations were the Presbyterian Church (19%), the Church of Ireland (14%) and the Methodist Church (3%). In terms of community background (i.e. religion or religion brought up in), 48% of the population came from a Protestant background, 45% from a Catholic background, 0.9% from non-Christian backgrounds, and 5.6% from non-religious backgrounds.
Data point: at the time the Irish Republic was declared, only 5% of the land in Ireland was owned by Irish people.
Data point: the Irish potato famine a.k.a. the Great Famine (1845-1849) led to a million deaths and a million and a half emigrants from Ireland with Ireland's population not yet restored to pre-famine levels. When aid started to arrive, in the form of meager porridge from India, Irish people had to work for it by building "pity walls" on mountains made out of rock that served absolutely no purpose for a penny a week and one meal of porridge a day. Food was shipped out of Ireland by British landlords while people starved to death. Rural Ireland is full of famine houses, abandoned or ruined little cottages whose inhabitants died or emigrated leaving their homes behind. Whole counties in Western Ireland were heavily depopulated, with government promotional programs in the last four or five decades finally repopulating them, largely as vacation cottage spots.
Ireland's population continued to decline after the famine to a low in the 1931 census of 4.21 million (including Northern Ireland), after the famine, mostly due to emigration driven by economic factors from a mostly rural country to other indusrializing countries. This was roughly a 50% decline from Ireland's true peak population which it probably reached in 1844 to 1931.
Ireland’s population was estimated to be 5.01 million in April 2021, which is the first time the population has risen above 5 million since the 1851 census, when the comparable population was 5.11 million . . .
The total population on the island of Ireland in 1851 was 6.6 million. Including today’s Northern Ireland population of 1.89 million, the island now has 6.9 million people.
As of 2021, the island of Ireland had still not recovered to its 1841 census pre-potato famine population of 8.2 million (according to the census, but the actual figure may be nearer 8.5 million), let alone its actual peak population in 1844.
The projected peak population for the island of Ireland as a whole is about 8.6-8.8 million (very close to the 1844 peak, which it may or may not ever reach), in about 2070, and its population is predicted to more or less level off with only the slightest growth after 2050, although predicting migration and fertility trends in this long timeframe is more art than science. * Resentment in Scotland towards England is apparently not as great as the United Kingdom was formed first by the personal union of monarchs from 1603 (under King James VI of Scotland a.k.a. King James I of England) followed by a federal style merger of governments approved by the Scottish and English parliaments in 1706-1707, rather than by conquest and it has much more government autonomy in generally applicable legislation and its judicial system than Wales does, and more than Ireland had when it was ruled by England. Scotland is also less culturally distinct from England than Ireland or Wales, although it certainly has many distinctions.
On the other hand, Scottish sentiment towards independence was in the last referendum in 2014 when 44.7% of votes cast were for independence with 84.6% voter turnout (even though the franchise was expanded down to sixteen year olds) and to E.U. and Commonwealth citizens residing there who were not U.K. citizens, in a pre-Brexit vote where a desire to stay in the E.U. was a major force for the independence vote. Of course, an independence vote wouldn't have been the end of the story because the terms of a split are much less obvious than the terms of a merger of countries.
* Ireland and Northern Ireland, after a long period of free immigration (including all of the U.K.'s E.U. membership pre-Brexit and under treaties before then), and no real language barriers, is very well sorted. People who want to be in the Republican of Ireland live there. People who want to live in Northern Ireland live there. There is little pent up demand to relocate from one to the other.
* The Anglican Church was disestablished in Wales in 1916, and Wales historically had favored non-Anglican, non-Catholic churches, typically with decentralized organization, especially Methodists. The Anglican Church is likewise not the established church of Scotland.
* Only about 8% of people in the U.K. attend religious services at least weekly, and Muslim immigrants and Christian immigrants make up a disproportionate share of this 8%, even though the England has an established church.
* One Irish national treasure which we saw (at the Trinity College Old Library) is the Book of Kells, an ornately illustrated version of the four Gospels in Latin from the 800s, around the time Colorado has the last drought as severe as its current one. The re-Christianization of Europe after the fall of Roman was commenced in Ireland and is associated with Saint Patrick. Monks were a major source of European influence on Ireland prior to the Normans.
* Ireland had bears in the Mesolithic era that early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers there killed off.
* Galway, Ireland was a trading post originally run by fourteen Norman clans known as tribes that assimilated many locals until they were "more Irish than the Irish", trading with France and Spain, for example, from a fortified city.
* In Ireland, the vast majority of structures, from buildings to fences, are made of stone or metal or concrete. Wood has, at least historically been very scarce, partially due to Viking raids that used available trees as lumber for their boats until it was gone, and partially due to poor soil and/or weather conditions for forests. Most deciduous trees are protected by law, although there are some small, recent, intentionally grown pine forests that do well in acidic soils and grow quickly.
* Ireland is served quite comprehensively by transit, mostly well utilized double decker buses with heavy use even in small towns and suburbs, and an intercity rail system in railcars that runs trains many times a day on each route, with passenger cars similar to Denver's commuter rail lines (but with diesel engines) without checked luggage, cabins or food and drink service, and speeds roughly identical to travel by its biggest highways (about 52 miles per hour including time spent at stops on the line from Dublin to Galway, for example, with a peak speed of 100 miles per hjour), and very reasonable prices (equivalent to about $20 U.S. per person for a 130 mile trip, with an average of one stop roughly every 9 miles, for example). There is an addition surface tramline in Dublin on a small number of routes with cars more suited to getting people quickly on and off. Most cities have pedestrian only districts, are bike friendly, and are designed for lots of walking. Alcohol is prohibited on all forms of public transit and in transit stations. A single monopoly firm created in 1987 provides all freight and passenger service in Ireland, although it was divided into an infrastructure company and a rolling stock operations company in 2013 and private companies are permitted in theory to operate competing rolling stock operations (and perhaps some do in the freight market now).
For comparison (from a previous post at this blog):
For example, an Amtrak trip from Denver to Grand Junction, Colorado [243 miles by interstate highway] takes 7 hours and 52 minutes. Taking a Greyhound bus would take 4 hours and 20 minutes. The price for a one way trip with no special discounts is identical for Amtrak and Greyhound. Driving a car that 245 miles from rail station to rail station would take 3 hours and 55 minutes, according to Map Quest.
The only high speed intercity passenger rail system in the United States right now, is Amtrak's Acela Express service from Washington D.C. to Boston, along the Northeast corridor (the only part of Amtrak that makes an operating profit) on rail lines dedicated to passenger service. Outside the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak shares rail lines with the freight rail system which owns and maintains the lines.
A trip for the entire length of the Acela line takes six and a half hours (an average of 69 miles an hour with peak speeds of 150 miles per hour) and serves sixteen stops. The roughly 450 mile trip would take about 7 hours, 50 minutes to traverse by car (an average of about 58 miles an hour mostly on urban interstates).
Irish Rail ticket prices are similar to historical Colorado Department of Transportation FLEX and FREX intercity bus service. It is about 45% of Amtrak and Greyhound bus service for similar distances outside the Northeast Corridor at significantly slower speeds (although the dollar is currently exceptionally strong via the Euro and it would probably average closer to 50%), even though Irish rail is similar to Acela service in average speed, a U.S. service which is considerably more expensive (which is still much slower than high speed rail lines in Continental Europe, Japan and China). Also, Ireland's fastest combinations of highways for trips comparable to these rail trips are about 10-15% slower than travel by road in U.S. Also essentially all domestic trips one can take in Ireland are too short for commercial air travel to be competitive with cars, buses, and rail, because air travel has more fixed per trip time of getting to the airport, going through security, boarding, deplaning, and getting from the airport to your destination - it has no truly long haul domestic trips, and international trips must involve either a ferry ride of at least two and a half hours at 23-46 miles per hour, or air travel.
As a reference point, Ireland has a similar population density to Indiana, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina and Tennessee (#16-#20 among U.S states). Wales has about a similar population density to Ohio and California (#10-#11 among U.S. states). England has a similar population density to Connecticut (#4 among U.S. states). Colorado ($37 among U.S. states), which is similar in land area and dimensions to Ireland has about a third of Ireland's population density. Here is a map of population density as of 2011 in Ireland and Great Britain (via Wikipedia scale is in people per square km):
* Public transit (mostly double decker buses) is also heavily used in Wales, with small towns and rural areas full of bus stops even in front of farmer's fields or isolated cottages.
* We have used almost every means of transportation on our trip: walking, pony trap, small ferry boat, gigantic roll on-roll off ferry, public city double decker bus, tour bus, airport shuttle, intercity Irish rail, commercial airliner, rental car (including via a lengthy underwater tunnel), London taxi, elevators, and escalators. We will also use the London Underground, moving sidewalks, and a London commuter rail service before we leave. We saw in use, but didn't use ourselves on this trip: horse riding, blimps, helicopters, two wheeled electric lime scooters, handicapped transit scooters, human-powered tricycle taxis, bicycles, motorcycles, and Vespa-style scooters.
* Gasoline in Ireland and the U.K. costs about twice what it does in the U.S. (equivalent to about $8 per gallon). In the U.K. the main kinds of gasoline are E-10 (95 octane) and E-5 (99 octane). Gas taxes are high and are a percentage so they go up automatically when prices rise. Rental cars are scarce in the U.K. Most rental cars are manual transmission as are 85% of personal motor vehicles in Europe (although that percentage is falling).
* Potholes are rare in both countries where roads tend to be in good repair. Both countries have narrower roads than they U.S., especially the U.K. Roundabouts are more common than stoplights (rare roundabouts have stoplights of their own). You have to be 30 years old to rent a car at most places in the U.K.
* The first significant intercity road built in England and Wales after the fall of the Roman Empire was built in 1801 (by a Scottish engineer).
* Tipping is rare and modest in both countries where people are paid a regular decent wage and not the U.S. $2ish minimum wage for tipped employees, but some places have mandatory "service fees" of up to 12.5%.
* The value added tax in both countries is quite high but invisible since prices are quoted post-tax.
* The lack of a tip and additional sales tax makes quoted prices for Euros and British pounds more comparable to U.S. prices than you'd expect, also given the very strong dollar when we visited (a Euro was $1.04 U.S.D. and a British pound was $1.22 U.S.D.).
* Ireland has fully converted to metric (except for pints of beer). The U.K. still uses miles in its cars and for distances and speeds on roadsigns.
* Immigration is very quick, low key, and nonchalant in both the Dublin airport and the port for the Irish ferry at Holyhead. But the Dublin airport has a serious staff shortage and is not well run. Almost no one there ever answers their phones at either the airlines or the airport itself. To deal with a luggage problem there we had to call the U.S., where the call was handled from India by a person not familiar with the conditions on the ground, and the airline ticket agents couldn't call the airline baggage handling line. Incidentally, I heard ordinary people conversing in Irish Gaelic in the luggage area (this is also popular with Irish students visiting abroad to afford them privacy).
* Many places in Ireland and the U.K. have regular sized USB charging ports (as opposed to micro-USB or USB-C) in addition to, or instead of, regular electrical outlets (of the G-type).
* A lot of water and space heating in Ireland and the U.K. is electric, rather than natural gas or heating oil based.
* Ireland generates about 48% with natural gas (96% imported by pipeline from Scotland that is part of a European network), about 14% from coal, about 7% from local peat, and the balance from renewables and other local biofuels. In England and Wales, most renewables are from giant industrial wind turbines both off shore and on land, serving utilities. In Ireland, lots of renewables are grass roots operations serving a home or business or farm.
* The Irish invented whiskey (a term that is derived from a mispronunciation of its Irish Gaelic name). Irish monks brought distillation technology from Moorish Spain. Initially it was used for "pot liquor" involving distillation of barley alone. What makes this grain alcohol into whiskey (from which you must remove the methanol produced first in the distillation process) and gives it its brownish color, is aging in barrels. Bourbon is made with never before used oak barrels in most cases. Whiskey is often made in bourbon barrels, but wine casks or sherry casks are sometimes used instead with a different color or taste. Three years of aging is the minimum for Scotland, three years and a day (to one up Scotland) is the minimum for Irish Whiskey, and more aging is used for premium whiskeys. Malted grains were originally used. Blended whiskeys were developed in response to taxes targeted at pure malted grains. Irish whiskey was originally made with three rounds of labor intensive small batch distillation, and efforts to make it with a mass produced continuously distillation process resulted in lawsuits declaring that product fraudulent to describe as whiskey until parliament legislatively redefined whiskey to allow it.
In the late 1800s, there was a whiskey (and beer brewing) boom in Ireland with hundred of small distilleries in the 1890s. But faced with cheaper Scottish mass production, a trade war with England, and prohibition in the U.S. in the 1930s, the industry collapsed to just five Irish distilleries that were united in a loose conglomerate. Bushnell's the dominant Northern Irish Whiskey was founded by a woman. Irish Whiskey recovered with the popularization of Irish Whiskey, served in Irish Coffee, a custom drink for airmen and travelers crossing the Atlantic to and from Europe invented at an airbase in Western Ireland in the 1950s, popularized it and Jamisons was chosen at the brand to market to lead the resurgence, mostly because of its distinctive logo and green bottle. None of the five historic Irish Whisky brands are now owned by Irish people. Jose Cuervo owns one. Another is owned by a Japanese company. Another is owned by a French company. Telling is the largest Irish owned Irish whisky brand.
* Hard cider (of many varieties) is almost as popular as beer in Ireland with beer bought disproportionately by men (and Guinness by far the most popular kind), and cider disproportionately preferred by their female companions, rather than hard seltzers or wine.
* Trinity College is the sole college of the University of Dublin, founded by Queen Elizabeth I in the 1570s with an intent to be home to many colleges like Oxford and Cambridge, that never materialized. The typical undergraduate degree there is a 3 year degree, as in England. Law, dentistry and medicine are all undergraduate degrees although dentistry and medicine take longer (six years if I recall correctly).
* Ireland's population is rapidly becoming more diverse due to immigration. Currently, more than 17% of the population is foreign born (higher in Dublin, lower elsewhere), with 46% of the foreign born residents having lived in Ireland less than five years. The range of places of origin for its immigrant populations is quite diverse since it is not dominated by past colonial ties. Facially, there is less racial and ethnic discrimination in Ireland than in England or the United States, in part, perhaps, due to a lack of history of bad relations, and in part, perhaps due to an Irish self-identity as an oppressed people themselves.
* Wales is also more ethnically diverse than you might expect, mostly spillover from the mix of immigrants found in greater London, despite a large share of the population having lived there for many generations.
* Rural areas in Ireland and Wales tend to be made up of dense small towns, with lots of townhouse development. Wales even has quite attractive mobile home parks (manufactured housing, not RVs).
* Homelessness isn't entirely absent in Ireland or Wales, but eyeballing it, vagrancy is less than 5% of U.S. levels. The government in both places provides housing for all.
* Ireland invests a lot in youth sports. Gaelic sports are run by a national non-profit (the GAA for Gaelic Athletics Association or something similar) that shares all of its profits from its national events with local Gaelic sports non-profits.
* Ireland and Wales both have far fewer chain businesses and big businesses than the U.S. for reasons that aren't entirely clear. There may be legally or regulatory differences, and/or, particularly in Ireland, the fact that there were so few Irish natives at the time of independence with significant net worths to invest in big businesses and an initially ill developed capital market (it is much more mature now) could be factors. I don't know if there are tax or regulatory factors discouraging direct investment in Irish enterprises to prefer local small businesses, although its European Union membership significant limits what it can do in that regard.
* Farms in Ireland are quite small relative to U.S. farms. Cattle and sheep herds per farmer are tiny. Much of the country isn't suitable to grow crops. Fishing is mostly focused on shell fish, lobsters and crabs, although some fish are also harvested.
* Dublin has the feel of a very large small town, even though it is a major metropolitan area, in large part because it has so few high rises even though it has huge sprawls of mid-rise development and fairly high residential density.
* Ireland has a shortage of skilled tradespeople as it faces a current construction boom.
* Sentiment in favor of Ukraine is very strong in Wales where Ukrainian flags are often seen and public sites light their buildings in Ukrainian flags oftentimes. In Ireland, it is even stronger. Ireland was at the forefront of welcoming Ukrainian refugees and I saw several hotels that had shut down regular operations to provide housing to Ukrainian refugees in individual acts of charity.
* Unlike Ireland which is short of trees, Wales is heavily forested. At one point it was depleted for use a lumber, although never that completely, but the English established conservation programs before it was cool for trees in Wales with an intent to build a stockpile for ship construction for military purposes when ships were still made of steel.
* The first major road project in England and Wales since the Romans was in 1801, to build a road by which Irish and Welsh MPs could travel to parliament. A Scottish engineer was hired.
* Government officials in both Ireland and Wales are very earnest although not particularly effectual, and big on propagandistic public service announcements and P.R. campaigns. We were interviewed by an Irish tourism agency official for an in depth survey of our experience before we left.
* Despite its historical reputation as a less affluent country, the Republic of Ireland has a GDP per capita of about 1/3rd more than the U.S., 6th in the world behind only Liechtenstein, Monaco, Luxembourg, Bermuda and Switzerland, at $85,268 per year per capita by World Bank measures, compared to $63,414 per year per capita for the U.S. (the U.N. also ranks it behind the Cayman Islands). It is the only decent sized country other than Switzerland to do so. The World Bank puts the U.K. at less than half its per capita GDP at $41,125 per year per capita. This defies a lot of common sense about what makes a national economy strong. Adjustments for purchasing power parity don't change the rankings or relative amounts much in these comparison. But, much of this is due to distortions associated with being tax havens of which Ireland is to a significant extent. Indeed:
In 2017, Ireland's economic data became so distorted by U.S. multinational tax avoidance strategies (see leprechaun economics), also known as BEPS actions, that Ireland effectively abandoned GDP (and GNP) statistics as credible measures of its economy, and created a replacement statistic called modified gross national income (or GNI*). Ireland is one of the world's largest corporate tax havens.
This inflates Ireland's GDP by about 62% (its modified figure is about 38% lower in a method that makes the modified calculation and GDP the same for a pool of 28 other countries of the E.U., i.e. $52,886). But, even with that adjustment Ireland is still stronger economically per capita than the U.K. and is only 17% lower than the U.S. as a whole (similar to Michigan relative to the U.S. as a whole).
Updated in various parts on May 16, 2022.
