[higgmeister]

Wow. Those Brits —I mean Irish sure are picky about labels!
I guess they haven’t forgotten about The Troubles.

And you might be a knowing that "The Troubles" happened in Northern Ireland which is still part of the United Kingdom, praise be.

Ireland has been independent of the United Kingdom for a hundred years.

[sparklite2]

And you might be a knowing that “The Troubles” happened in Northern Ireland which is still part of the United Kingdom, praise be.

---

I read a couple of books about “The Troubles,” and came away wishing a pox on both their houses.

[Olog-hai]

Not quite. De facto independence happened in 1937 when the monarch relinquished all governmental ties (then George VI) and turned everything over to the Irish president. De jure independence happened when the 1948 legislation that officially had Ireland rename itself a republic was passed.

However, joining the EEC in 1972 was an act of Ireland throwing away its independence. The Third Amendment declared that laws out of Brussels would “have the force of law in the state”, thus putting a foreign government’s laws supreme over any law coming out of Dublin.

And the Treaty of Maastricht, which renamed the EEC to the EU, was an act of reunifying Ireland and Britain, albeit both under the rule of a foreign government. Even worse, it saw Ireland throw away its own currency.