I’m 53% Irish so I can say this: why did it take 200 yrs for the Irish to throw off the yoke of the British occupiers? Their country is now being invaded by Muslims so the govt is caving once again to the aggressors. He could have just kept his mouth shut, FFS!
The British weren’t “occupiers” per se, unless you count the Papacy as an occupier. It was Pope Adrian IV and Pope Alexander II that confirmed England’s Henry II as “Lord of Ireland”, particularly subsequent to the Norman invasion and the political restructuring initiated by Richard “Strongbow” DeClare.
The notion of “occupation” was actually promulgated by the communists in the Irish Republican Brotherhood; before 1916, the majority of Irish wanted only home rule, i.e. their own parliament back, while continuing to have the English king as sovereign—and the irony of that is the Free State gave them all of that.