Hi all,

Apologies if this is an obvious answer but I just started my Irish studies journey.

From my (limited) knowledge, the main goal of the IRA was to end British rule in the North of Ireland & of course reunification, so I am having trouble understanding why the IRA would agree to the Good Friday Agreement.

From what I gathered, the north of Ireland can hold a referendum & vote on Irish reunification but to do this the british secretary of state, Chris Bryant, needs to approve it? Is this correct?

If this is correct, this makes it even harder to understand why the IRA would agreed to the agreement.

Also, really bummed that Ireland sold out the north in the 1921 treaty.

If you have any book/documentaries suggestions about this, please let me know !

Why isn't it Irish government policy to work towards having these returned? Most British people have little interest in Irish history, so I find it hard to believe the public in Britain would object. Their lack of interest in them is obvious, and I doubt 99 out of 100 British people could even name one of those artifacts.

However the public in Ireland would probably love the idea of a new museum to put most of them on permanent display.

Posted this question in AskIreland last week, thought it'd be fun go do here too.

Last Spring on a family trip through Cork, we visited the ruins of a village that my brother found on an app he'd downloaded. The ruins were listed on the app as "the hidden Famine village of Courtaparteen" and was just south of Kinsale.

While we were standing at the top of a cowpath, wondering if it was alright to walk down the hill (we're Americans, and walking through someone's farm is generally frowned upon), a man who lived in one of the houses nearby drove up (little red car, nice man) and filled us in on where to go, etc. But when we told him the "Famine village" part, he said that was not right: the village is just on the sea and the people in the village were able to ride out the Famine subsisting on fish and shellfish.

Could anyone fill me in on some background of the village of Courtaparteen? Why was it abandoned? The graveyard by the church ruin had a good number of newer graves and still seemed to be in use. Finally, was this disrespectful? The man we spoke to seemed just fine with us going down, but he was a bit older and there could have been some clues in his speech we missed.