QUERY RECEIVED:

“WHY?”

RESPONSE:

The partition of Ireland was the outcome of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which concluded the Irish War of Independence. An earlier law passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom had partitioned Ireland into two quasi-autonomous areas known as Northern and Southern Ireland, under the authority of the United Kingdom. The Treaty established Ireland as a self-governing dominion known as the Irish Free State, but gave the Northern Ireland the right to leave the Free State and rejoin the United Kingdom, which the Northern Ireland Assembly chose to exercise.