Visiting Ireland at the moment and I don’t want to misunderstand or say anything incorrect when conversations come up!
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Ireland is independent, Northern Ireland is part of the UK (not entirely voluntarily, obviously, couple hundred years ago England was just doing their usual ‘Oh that land looks nice, it’s mine now’ ). There’s a lot of Irish people who aren’t big fans of their country being cleaved in two like that, and want NI to rejoin Ireland and gain independence from the UK. The fact that the UK follows the Church of England but Ireland is traditionally deeply Catholic is a further exasperating factor.
These tensions came to a head during the troubles from the 60’s to the late 90’s when the paramilitary Irish Republican Army waged a low level violent conflict against Ulster Loyalists (pro uk irish paramilitary) and the UK army.
The troubles mostly ended with the 1998 Good Friday agreement which is a complex series of treaties about how NI is governed.
Brexit and the issue of the border between NI and Ireland brought the whole thing back into the public mind in the last few years.
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