HISTORY

Northern Ireland is today one of the four countries of the United Kingdom, (although it is also described by official sources as a province or a region) situated in the northeast of the island of Ireland, having been created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster: four counties with unionist majorities, and Fermanagh and Tyrone, two of the five Ulster counties which had nationalist majorities. In large part unionists, at least in the northeast, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed. Subsequently, on 6 December 1922, the whole island of Ireland became an independentdominion known as the Irish Free State but Northern Ireland immediately exercised its right to opt out of the new dominion.