Flag of Ireland

What the flag of Ireland looks like

The flag of Ireland has three vertical stripes of the same width: green next to the flagpole, white in the middle and orange on the fly side. The proportions are 1:2, so the flag is twice as wide as it is tall. There is no emblem, text or other decoration. It is usually called the tricolour.

Because of its colors, the Irish flag is sometimes confused with the flag of Ivory Coast, which is orange, white and green with the orange at the hoist and a 2:3 ratio. It also resembles the flag of Italy in layout, though not in color: Italy's third color is red. The Ireland flag emoji keeps the same three stripes, and the flag can be downloaded from the Ireland flag download page.

Irish flag meaning and symbolism

The green stands for the older Gaelic and mostly Catholic tradition of Ireland, and for nationalism. The orange stands for the supporters of William of Orange, the Protestant king who defeated the Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and so for the Protestant community. The white in the middle is a symbol of lasting peace and truce between the two. Together the three stripes are an expression of the hope for unity of people of different traditions on the island.

The shade of the orange is sometimes written as gold, and on some versions it can look yellow. The flag was not given an official explanation of the colors in the Constitution, which says only that the national flag is the tricolour of green, white and orange. So the meaning is the one given by those who first raised it.

History of the Irish flag

Before the tricolour, Ireland was associated with a green flag with a gold harp, which was used from the 17th century and by the United Irishmen in the 1790s. Saint Patrick's saltire, a red diagonal cross on white, was also used as a symbol of Ireland under British rule.

The tricolour was first presented in 1848 by Thomas Francis Meagher of the Young Ireland movement. He had seen the French tricolor during a visit to Paris, where the revolution of that year had brought it back into use, and brought it home as a gift from French women sympathetic to the Irish cause. Meagher described it as a symbol of a union between the Orange and the Green. For decades it was used by only a few groups.

The flag became widely known after the Easter Rising of 1916, when it was flown on the roof of the General Post Office in Dublin alongside a green flag reading "Irish Republic". In the following years, during the War of Independence, it was accepted as the flag of the Irish nationalist movement. The Irish Free State used it from 1922, and it was written into the Constitution of Ireland in 1937, in Article 7. Since 1949, when the state declared itself a republic, it has been the flag of the Republic of Ireland.

Are there two Irish flags?

Ireland has one national flag, the tricolour. People who ask about two flags usually mean either the older green flag with a harp or the flags of the four provinces of Ireland: Leinster, Munster, Connacht and Ulster. The provincial flags are seen mostly at sports events and cultural gatherings.

Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and does not have an official flag of its own at present. The Ulster Banner, a red cross on white with a red hand and a crown, was used by the government of Northern Ireland between 1953 and 1972. The Union Flag is the official flag there. The Irish tricolour is also used by many people there who identify as Irish. The Irish national flag can be compared with those in Europe.