GENERAL INFORMATION

Northern Ireland,constituent part of the United Kingdom, lying in the northeast of the island of Ireland, itself located on that western continental periphery often characterized as Atlantic Europe. Northern Ireland is often referred to as the province of Ulster (and its inhabitants as Ulstermen), though it includes only six of the nine counties which made up that historic Irish entity. Northern Ireland occupies an area of 5,452 square miles (14,120 square kilometres), about a sixth of the whole of the island, and is separated on the east from Scotland, another constituent country of the United Kingdom, by the narrow North Channel, which is at one point only 13 miles (21 kilometres) wide. The Irish Sea separates Northern Ireland from England and Wales on the east and southeast, respectively, and the Atlantic Ocean lies to the north. The southern border is with the republic of Ireland.