I didn't know if it got attached to the Irish or not.
We Yanks tend to be a bit dense about that stuff.
When you have a country that is 2000 miles long and 3000+ wide , it's hard to conceive of 2 nations being on one island and both smaller than Texas.
It's something our media over here fail to take into account when they are trying to protray Americans as 'ignorant' of world affairs - they should think about the fact that big countries have enough going on inside their borders.