| Ireland
- Overview
Basic Statistics
- Population: 3.9 million people, 1 million of those live in the
capital city, Dublin.
- Other main cities are Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Galway.
- There are 26 counties comprising the Irish Republic, 6 counties
(Northern Ireland) are part of the UK. It is this part which
has seen political violence and which is now the focus of peace
efforts.
- Language: English is the everyday language in most of the country.
Irish is a second official language.
Location
Ireland is an island west of the UK, in the Northwest of Europe.
The capital city, Dublin, on the east coast is one hour’s flight
from London, an hour and a half from Paris and two hours from Frankfurt.
You can find a general map of Ireland here,
or you can use Expedia
to locate specific towns and/or plan your route.
Getting here
Ireland has three major airports: Dublin,
Cork and Shannon
and regional ones at Knock, Sligo, Galway, Kerry and Waterford while
Northern Ireland is served by Belfast international, Belfast city
and Derry airports.
Aer Lingus is the national
airline, while Ryanair operates
a low cost service from many European cities. Most of the major
European airlines fly to Dublin from their native countries, try
their respective websites or any of the following sites for flight
information/booking, www.travelocity.com,
www.Ebookers.com, www.deckchair.com
or www.expedia.com.
There is also plenty of ferry transport to Ireland.
Irish Ferries,
Irish Stena, Swansea
Cork Ferries run daily services between Ireland, Britain and
France, depending on the time of year.
If you're coming for an interview, check our Airport
Interview Guide for an overview of getting from airports to
city centre.
Culture/Lifestyle/History
Ireland is a very popular tourist destination because of laid back
lifestyle, friendly people, beautiful landscape, pub culture, and
traditional music and dancing. Ireland has a strong musical
and literary background, having produced several noble prize winners
for literature for example James Joyce. Ireland is famous
for its musical tradition with world famous bands like Clannad and
more recently, U2.
Bord
Failte - the Irish Tourist Board's gives a flavour of what's
on offer for tourists.
There are several cultural events and festivals happening around
the country - check out http://www.entertainmentireland.ie
or http://www.shannon-dev.ie/tourism/holidays.
History: things haven't always been this good in Ireland; here's
a good summary of Irish
History.
Economy
Ireland has been experiencing an economic boom for the last X years
which has earned it the name of The Celtic Tiger (after the Asian
Tigers of the 80s). The boom is mostly the result of successful
initiatives to attract high tech inward investment in order to slash
unemployment and kick start indigenous industry. Ireland is
now the largest exporter of computer software in the world and has
had the fastest growing economy in the world for past 3 years or so.
It's the European base for many multinational companies. English
being the everyday language on most of the island and a high standard
of education have helped. Unemployment is 4%, the lowest in
X years. The ERSI (Economic and Social Research Institute) has
published its report on the Second Quarter 2001 here.
Central Statistics Office,
Irish Times
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