Ireland

Ireland is a country on an island.

The big Atlantic Ocean is to the west. It rains a lot, so the grass is very green. Ireland shares its island with Northern Ireland. The capital city is Dublin.

Ireland is a country in western Europe. It is on an island west of Great Britain, and it covers most of that island. The northeast part of the island, Northern Ireland, belongs to the United Kingdom.

Plenty of rain falls on Ireland, and its wide grasslands are so green that people call it the Emerald Isle. In the middle of the country is a low, flat plain with lakes and bogs, and mountains rise near the coasts. The capital is Dublin, and more than 5.5 million people lived in Ireland in 2026.

The state of Ireland covers about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, the westernmost major island of the British Isles; Northern Ireland, six of the island's 32 counties in the province of Ulster, remains part of the United Kingdom. The state's area is 69,797 square kilometers, of an island of 84,421.

Britannica explains the nickname Emerald Isle by the green grasslands that abundant rain keeps growing. A broad central plain of limestone, mostly 60 to 120 meters above sea level, is almost ringed by coastal highlands. Ireland's Central Statistics Office estimated the population at 5,525,600 in April 2026, up 66,900 in a year.

Dublin is the biggest city in Ireland.

It is on the east coast. Cork and Galway are cities too. Very old stone tombs stand near a river called the Boyne. On a rocky island out at sea, monks once built little stone buildings.

Dublin, the capital, is on the east coast. More than a quarter of everyone in Ireland lives in and around it: about 1.6 million people lived in Dublin in 2026. Cork, the second largest city, is a port in the southwest, and Galway lies on the west coast.

North of Dublin, beside the River Boyne, stand Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, three huge, very old mounds with stone tombs inside, built by early farmers. Off the southwest coast, monks once lived on a steep rocky island called Skellig Michael, in small stone buildings that still stand.

Dublin is the chief port and a center of finance, commerce and culture; its metropolitan area holds more than a quarter of the population, and the CSO estimated that 1,597,700 people (28.9 percent) lived in Dublin in April 2026. Cork, the second largest city, is a cathedral city and port in the southwest; Galway and Limerick are principal centers in the west.

Brú na Bóinne, on the north bank of the Boyne, is dominated by the great mounds of Knowth, Newgrange and Dowth with about 40 smaller passage graves; UNESCO calls it Europe's largest and most important concentration of prehistoric megalithic art (inscribed 1993). Sceilg Mhichíl (Skellig Michael), almost 12 km off the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, holds an early medieval monastery and a hermitage on terraces below its 218-meter South Peak; it was inscribed in 1996 and is one of Ireland's most important seabird breeding sites.

The middle of Ireland is low and flat.

It has lakes and soft, wet ground called bogs. Mountains stand near the sea. The tallest one is Carrauntoohil. Ireland gets lots of rain, but not much snow.

The middle of Ireland is a low plain with lakes, bogs and low hills, ringed almost all the way round by mountains near the coast. The highest peak, Carrauntoohil, is 1,039 meters tall, in the Macgillycuddy's Reeks in the southwest. The River Shannon flows slowly south through the middle of the country for about 260 kilometers.

The Atlantic Ocean, never more than 113 kilometers from anywhere inland, shapes the weather, which is mild. Winters are cool but snow is unusual except in the mountains, and the west gets far more rain than the east.

The central lowland, underlain by limestone and lying mostly between 60 and 120 m, is scattered with lakes, large bogs and low ridges; at least two glaciations shaped it, and peat bogs are a notable feature across the country. Coastal mountains ring it: granite in the west, northwest and east, Old Red Sandstone ridges trending east-west in the south. Carrauntoohil in the Macgillycuddy's Reeks is the highest point at 1,039 m (Britannica gives 1,041 m); Lugnaquillia tops the Wicklow Mountains at 926 m. The Shannon flows sluggishly for some 260 km to tidewater at Limerick.

The climate is western maritime. Mild southwesterly winds and the warm North Atlantic Current keep temperatures almost uniform: January and February average mainly 4 to 7 °C, July and August 14 to 16 °C. Yearly precipitation rises from about 760 mm in the east to more than 2,533 mm in exposed western areas, and severe snowstorms are rare.

Ireland has no wild snakes.

It has a hare that lives only in Ireland. Red deer live in a big park called Killarney. Many seabirds nest on a rocky island called Skellig Michael.

Ice covered almost all of Ireland during the Ice Age, and most of its plants and animals arrived from other places afterward. Ireland has no wild snakes, moles or weasels, and its only reptile is one kind of lizard. Mammals found only in Ireland include the Irish hare and the Irish stoat.

In Killarney National Park lives the last native herd of red deer in Ireland, there since the Stone Age. White-tailed sea eagles, gone since the early 1900s, have been brought back there. Ireland is full of birds, and many water birds that nest in Iceland and Greenland spend the winter in Ireland.

Because Ireland was almost completely glaciated during the Ice Age, its plants and animals mainly arrived later from other areas, while a land connection lasted; Ireland separated from Britain before Britain separated from the continent. Snakes have not lived wild on the island since the Ice Age, the weasel and mole are absent, there are only two kinds of mice and the only reptile is one lizard species. Endemic mammals include the Irish stoat and the Irish hare, while the giant Irish elk has long been extinct.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service describes the red deer of Killarney National Park as the last surviving indigenous herd in Ireland, present since Neolithic times; other herds descend from reintroduced stock, mainly from Scotland. White-tailed sea eagles, absent since the early 20th century, were reintroduced in the park. Forests that once covered the midlands had shrunk to about 1 percent of the land by the late 19th century, and reforestation has mostly favored fast-growing Sitka spruce.

More than 5.5 million people live in Ireland.

People speak English, and many learn Irish too. Music is played on fiddles and tin whistles. Gaelic football and hurling are old Irish games.

Ireland has two official languages, Irish and English. English is spoken everywhere, and Irish is taught in schools. In a few areas, mostly in the west, called the Gaeltacht, Irish is still the everyday language.

Traditional music is played on the fiddle, the tin whistle and the uilleann pipes, a kind of Irish bagpipes, and the harp is a symbol of Ireland. Gaelic football and hurling are Irish games, and big matches are played at Croke Park in Dublin. Traditional foods include soda bread and colcannon, made from potatoes and cabbage.

The CSO estimated 5,525,600 people in April 2026, with 992,400 aged 0 to 14 (the first time under a million since 2014) and 891,100 aged 65 and over; 110,600 people immigrated in the year to April 2026. Immigration from the rest of Europe, Africa and Asia has been significant since the late 20th century, and the Travellers, a traditionally nomadic Indigenous ethnic minority with their own customs and language, have lived in Ireland for centuries.

The constitution makes Irish the first official language and English the second; English is universally spoken, and Irish as an everyday language is concentrated in small Gaeltacht areas. Roman Catholicism is the largest religion, and there is no established church. The Gaelic Athletic Association, founded in 1884 to revive native sports, runs Gaelic football and hurling. Four Irish writers have won the Nobel Prize for Literature: Yeats (1923), Shaw (1925), Beckett (1969) and Heaney (1995).