1. Geography

Ireland is situated in the Atlantic Ocean and separated from Great Britain by the Irish Sea. It occupies the entire island except for the six counties  that make up Northern Ireland. Ireland resembles a central plain rimmed  with mountains, except in the Dublin region. The mountains are low, with the highest peak, Carrantuohill in the County Kerry rising to 1041 m . The principal river is the Shannon which begins in the north central area and flows southwest into the Atlantic.
 
2. Government

It's a Republic

3. History

About 4th century BC the Celts arrived in Ireland to build a Gaelic civilization. By the beginning of the Christian Era, Ireland was divided into five kingdoms, Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, Meath, and Munster. Saint Partrick introduced Christianityin 432 and the country developed into a centre of Gaelic and Latin Learning  with the Irish monasteries equivalent to universities.
After Norse  depredation along the coasts, in the 12th century, the pope gave Ireland to the English crown as a papal fief. The English control over the whole island was not reasonably absolute until the 17th century.
By the Act of Union (1801), england and Ireland became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish economy knew a steady decline in the next decade. The population had reached 8.25 million when the great potato famine of 1846-1848 took many lives and drove more than 2 million people to immigrate to North America.
In the meantime, the anti-British agitation continued demanding for Irish home rules. Irish nationalists guerilla took place during and after the W.W.I ; finally the Irish free state was established in 1922, with the 6 northern counties remaining as part of the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland  was proclaimed on April 18, 1949. It withdrew from the commonwealth, but in 1955 Ireland entered in the United Nations. In the 1960s, there were  two movement, one to rebuild the country after the rebellion and the civilian war and the other was to support the Irish Republican Army to bring Northern Ireland into the Republic.
During the 1960s Ireland also received a lot of foreign investments that brought profound social and cultural changes  to what had been one of the poorest and least technologically advanced  countries in Europe. Ireland joined the European Economic Community in 1973 and has known a incredible economical growth.
Despite a joined peace initiative between Irish and British Governments to bring peace in Northern Ireland, the new coalition government  came crash down in july 1999  because of the timetable of the IRA’disarmament. In one hand,  Sinn Feign insisted  the IRA  would begin giving its illegal weapons after the new government has formed and on the other hand, Unionists demands disarmament first.