Ireland 🇮🇪

Ireland is an independent state in Northern Europe, and a member of the United Nations. In formal use it is Republic of Ireland. Dublin is the capital.

Around 5.4 million people live there, placing it 120th of 249 by population — between Slovakia above it and the Central African Republic below. Among the 16 entries in Northern Europe it ranks 6th by area and 6th by population.

By land area it covers 70,273 km², which ranks it 121st of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Sierra Leone and just ahead of Georgia. That makes it around a fifth smaller than Austria.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 53.0° N, 8.0° W, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 5,900 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Belarus sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 1 neighbour: the United Kingdom.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

Density comes out at around 77 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Ireland is an Irish.

2 languages carry official status: English and Irish. Irish is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Ireland. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Inside Europe it places 26th of 53 by population, and it accounts for 4.9% of everyone living in Northern Europe.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Ireland ranks 121st of 249 by area and 120th by population. That works out at 0.047% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.066% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Ireland in the size ordering are Sierra Leone at 71,740 km² and Georgia at 69,700 km², against Ireland's 70,273 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Ireland averages 77 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 137th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Zoom in from the world to Northern Europe and Ireland sits 6th of 16 by population and 6th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Norway just above and Lithuania just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

United Kingdom is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Northern Europe has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇳🇴 Norway
• 🇱🇹 Lithuania
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Ireland does not have the Euro to itself. It is one of 38 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is EUR, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in EUR travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Ireland among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

The currency is the Euro (€, EUR). That is a shared currency: 37 other entries use it, including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and Croatia.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Ireland, the answer is Dublin.

Its internet country code is .ie. Calls from overseas start with +353. Standard country codes: ie and IRL.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.