Casualties
The number of Irish deaths in the British Army recorded by the registrar general was 27,405, a casualty rate of 14%, roughly in line with the rest of the British forces. By contrast, the National War Memorial at Islandbridge, Dublin is dedicated "to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914-1918". This figure is often questioned. Recent estimates for Northern Ireland are given at up to 20,000 casualties, and between 30,000 to 35,000 for the whole of Ireland. It has been suggested that the often-cited death toll of 40-50,000 refers to all the fatalities in the Irish Divisions. In fact, only 71% of the casualties in these Divisions were natives of Ireland.
The dead were buried close to the battlefield, but some of the seriously injured were sent to convalesce in Ireland. Those who died of their wounds in Ireland were buried in the Grangegorman Military Cemetery, if their bodies were not claimed by their families. The majority of those buried in Grangegorman are from the Great War.
Read more about this topic: Ireland And World War I