Ireland
Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution as originally enacted in 1937 contained a territorial claim over the six counties of Northern Ireland, which lay under de facto British sovereignty (as they still do today). In particular, Article 2 stated that "he national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland". This was regarded by unionists in Northern Ireland as an illegal extraterritorial claim, and encountered some hostility. In 1999 the Republic of Ireland revised Articles 2 and 3 as part of the Northern Ireland peace process to remove the explicit territorial claim: they now provide merely that "t is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland... to be part of the Irish Nation". The Ulster Unionist Party has accepted the revision of the articles, but the larger Democratic Unionist Party has not.
Read more about this topic: Exclusive Mandate
Famous quotes containing the word ireland:
“Out of Ireland have we come,
Great hatred, little room
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
A fanatic’s heart.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“In Ireland they try to make a cat cleanly by rubbing its nose in its own filth. Mr. Joyce has tried the same treatment on the human subject. I hope it may prove successful.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That’s not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It’s just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.”
—Dodie Smith, and Lewis Allen. Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland)