Back

2. First of all, some clarification on terms: Ireland is an island in the north Atlantic.

The island is divided between the country Ireland (Éire in Irish, and
sometimes referred to as the "Republic of Ireland" or simply "the Republic") and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Irish_state

3. Ireland is part of the EU , and the land border and freedom of movement with the UK proved to be a tricky point to resolve in Brexit negotiations.

The "border" itself is 499km long with about 300 crossings, often entirely unmarked.

https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/gallery/border-lines-between-uk-ireland-16678901

4. One famous example of border oddness is "the Drummully Polyp", an Irish pene-exclave.

The only road access is via Northern Ireland .

https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=54.1575&mlon=-7.3104#map=11/54.1575/-7.3104

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drummully

5. Like the border itself, the UK and Ireland share a long, complicated and intertwined history.

Irish citizens have permanent right to live and work in the UK.
Meanwhile people born in Northern Ireland are also entitled to Irish citizenship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nationality_law_and_the_Republic_of_Ireland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_nationality_law

6. Ireland and the UK do however disagree on some points.

Ireland does not recognise the UK's claim to Rockall, an uninhabited tiny island in the North Atlantic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall

#geoweirdness

BTW - there was some recent Rockall news: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/21/rockall-atlantic-chris-cameron-survival-gear

(and yes, we do have an alert set for Rockall news. Obvs)

7. Ireland itself makes some quite aggressive maritime claims

https://iilss.net/tag/ireland-territorial-sea-map/

8. As alluded to earlier, in Ireland two languages has official status: Irish and English.

While English is more widely used generally, several areas are designated as "Gaeltacht" where special measures are taken to try to reinforce Irish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeltacht

9. Ireland was the last country in Europe to introduce a national postal code system. Called "Eircodes", national postcodes were introduced only in 2014, and are still not widely used.

Sadly Eircodes are not open data, which means using them at scale (for example for geocoding) requires a license and paying a licensing fee

https://finder.eircode.ie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_addresses_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland#Eircode

10. The island of Ireland was historically divided into about 61,000 "townlands", a small geographical division of land of Gaelic origin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townland

Mapping them has been a very long-running project inthe OpenStreetMap Ireland community

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ireland/Mapping_Townlands

11. Indeed, the OpenStreetMap community in Ireland is very active: https://www.openstreetmap.ie

They were one of the very first communities we interviewed in our blog series where we speak with OSM communities around the world:
https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/99554636383/country-profile-state-of-openstreetmap-in

Limerick was the site of the second ever State of the Map OSM conference, all the way back in 2008 https://2008.stateofthemap.org (our very own @freyfogle was one of the speakers)

12. Wrapping things up, you may be surprised to learn of New Ireland, a province of Papua New Guinea on the other side of the world from Ireland .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Ireland_Province

New Ireland was a correct answer in the April 2023 #fridaygeotrivia competition where we asked about states/provinces named after countries they are not part of:
https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-april-2023

13. That's it for our look at Ireland's #geoweirdness.

Thanks for reading and boosting. What did we overlook?

We have more threads about specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc on our blog.

Enjoy: https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads

14. Final bonus toot - Ireland of course has a rich musical tradition, and has gifted the world with some of the best songs about geocoding.

We close with U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzZWSrr5wFI

@opencage Another fact that I should have remembered - in 1846, with the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, Ireland became the first country in the world to be entirely mapped in detail. https://osi.ie/about/history/

@opencage And this mapping of a Gaelic land by English speaking surveyors had profound cultural implications which persist to this day and which are perhaps best captured in Brian Friel's play "Translations". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translations_(play)

@ccferrie @opencage I still want to write a spoof version called "ST_Translations"

@ccferrie @opencage also feeatured extensively in Edward Said's Culture & Imperialism.

Paul Durcan's poem "To Brian Friel in his 60th birthday" in his collection "Greeting to our Friends in Brazil" is wonderful for its joie de vivre.

@opencage A country, yes. A sovereign state, no - it was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

@ccferrie well now who's being a stickler, Ciarán?

@opencage It comes with the territory...literally!

@jjcelery @opencage Over in the US, the president of the UAW union is Shawn Fain, and I was so delighted I got to say "many people have learned it's unwise to pick a fight with Shawn Fain."

@HistoPol @opencage Oh, the border is very much there. Even if you can't see it, the ping you get on your phone welcoming you to a new mobile phone network will tell you where you are.

@ccferrie

Good point. :)
I know, though, from travelling on the Continent, that this can be quite wrong. In the border area, the best "signal mast" wins, regardless of the side its on.

@opencage