[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Octillion

Ulster Protestants are ethnically British and, have formed a separate and cohesive community in Ireland and separate and cohesive national identity for almost 400 years. Ulster to Ulster Protestants has more in common with Scotland and England than it does with the rest of Ireland.

As far as Ulster Protestants are concerned, and I agree with them, they are a separate nation to the Gaelic Irish and the part of Ireland that they occupy is far more a British territory than an Irish one. They see Ulster as separate country to the rest of Ireland and they regard Ulster their homeland. It is different in its majority culture, religion, tradition and ethos, even the physical environment is different to the rest of Ireland as the Scottish and English colonists cleared vast tracts of the countryside for farms. It is substantially different to the rest of Ireland.

And Ulster Protestants have every right to consider Ulster as their homeland. Why shouldn't they? They are not like ethnic Germans, or gypsies, that only made up a fraction of the population of their host countries in countries such as Slovenia. They are a cohesive national community of one million people with their own state and that state is constitutionally legal and internationally recognised as such.

It is true that an Ulsterman is different from other Irishmen and have many things in common with their neighbours the Lowland Scots. At the same time I'd say Irishmen from Leinster (the south east of the island) have a lot in common with the southern English. I think people hugely overstate the cultural gap created by the Irish Sea for political reasons. I think the key point is that the future of Northern Ireland should be freely decided by those who live there.