Join the new world

When did you start playing?
-I just checked, over 8 years ago. Hard to believe.

What did eIreland look like when you started?
-e-Ireland had a fairly good mix of people, lots of interesting characters, but was frustratingly neutral in world affairs.

How was Labour Ireland formed?
-Labour was formed by Brian Boru, Glorious Connolly and myself. A Socialist party, which wasn't very popular in e-Ireland at the time.

Tell us about how the party functioned and how it developed,
-Its development was very slow at the start, but slowly we recruited good people. We aimed to recruit active people who themselves would also become recruiters for the party. Eventually we had evolved into a well oiled machine. Very good at managing elections. Regularly the top 5 articles in Ireland were all by Labour members. We operated on the idea of a "State within a State."
Where we pretty much ignored the official Govt of Ireland and operated as a country of our own.

Tell us about Irish Citizen Army.
-The ICA was founded to be our army. The ICA eventually became stronger then the national army. The ICA is probably what you would call the father of the Irish Army. When ICA was founded, the national army was called The IDF, Irish Defence Force. Things were not good between IDF and ICA. The Irish Govt tried very hard to have us outlawed. It eventually ended in the first Civil War in erep.

Tell us about that conflict.
-orangjuicemmm, an ICA member won the Country Presidency. 2 days later a majority IDF congress impeached him. For no reason, other than I was his MoD.
So he started RWs in the colonies that we had won in the first place. And melted quite a few state companies to fund it.

Tell us the history of eIreland.
-Ireland was neutral. Lots of nice people and good community, but boring in that it never took part in any of the events that were happening around the world. Labour/ICA were the force that forced that to change. By declaring for sides in wars and creating our own allies. ICA made allies of Canada, Croatia and Seal Team 6 in USA. And this culminated in Ireland being dragged kicking and screaming in the Brolliance.

Tell us about the Brolliance and joining EDEN.
-When Ireland eventually took Northern Ireland for the first time, and people saw how many from those 3 countries fought for us, it began to change attitudes in Ireland about our place in the world. Getting Ireland into the Brolliance was both easy and hard. Hard part was convincing enough role playing congress men to agree to it Easy part was getting USA and Canada to let us in. My meeting with Josh Frost and Chucky Norris, then CPs of USA and Can went something like:
"hey, can we join brolliance?"
"kk bro."

But yes, we recognised that it was the first step we needed to take to prepare Ireland for EDEN. Ireland was still very conservative minded, so it had to be done little by little.

Tell us about Ireland's days in EDEN.
-I think Ireland did very well in EDEN. We held a huge amount of influence over world affairs for a country our size because we had such good people running the country by that stage. There came a stage where ICA had the personnel to run an alliance by ourselves if that was something that was required. We had branches of ICA in 5 countries. We fought hard for EDEN and they fought hard every time we needed them too.

Which 5 countries?
-Ireland, Croatia, USA, Canada and Israel
at one point our total damage stats amounted to that of a typical medium sized country. But damage wasnt what we were about. We were about people. We let everyone in, gave everyone a chance. Sometimes it backfired and we got burned, like when all of our companies got melted and funds stolen, but mostly people liked being believed in and thrived there. We had members from all nations working together.

Tell us about the war with Poland.
-Some people with a dubious past became great presidents becuase of the support network and the wisdom of the ICA. People lol'd at the thought of Padraig Pearse being CP. His term was the best term in the history of Ireland. We started that term wiped by UK and had been for 2 months, we started a war with Poland (who were occupying regions in USA) after we got one region on the map. The world laughed and called us stupid. A week later Ireland had beaten Poland and kicked them out of USA. The world stopped laughing.

https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/tell-me-of-a-nation--1842195/1/20
by Glove, ex ICA member.

Tell us about days after EDEN.
-Those were tricky days. Well, so was the days near the end of EDEN perhaps even more so. We were caught between 2 allies Croatia and BG. Now, we were never going to choose BG over Cro. However, we felt that EDEN was going strong as it was and pissing off BG by forcing them to accept Turkey was not the way to ensure the long term health of the alliance. Cro seemed to take this personally. BG probably would have left EDEN eventually anyway but the way EDEN leadership went about that issue gave BG a stick to beat the rest of the alliance with. However, by Ireland recognising BGs rights as a member we cut that stick a bit shorter. Forcing Turley in killed EDEN so in the end Ireland was right. We wanted EDEN to stay together and that could only happen if things were done the right way. If BG wanted to leave, dont give them mountains of ammunition for propoganda by ignoring their rights as a member. Basically it was very bad PR for EDEN. Good PR at that time would have saved the alliance, even if BG left. After EDEN, well Ireland was stuck between our old allies and BG. BG remembered how we conducted ourselves towards the end of EDEN and they showed us a lot of respectm. However, Ireland could never ever fight against Croatia, ever. which meant that any future alliance that BG wanted us to join was a problem because of that.

So what has Ireland been up to since then? And ICA?
-ICA hasnt done much in recent times, we had a Dictatoraship for half a year, and funded and organised Ireland's excellent performance in the resource wars. It was kind of a last hurrah, to leave something tangible for e-Ireland.
e-Ireland itself has become smaller and less active.

What do you hope for Ireland's future?
-I would like to see a lot of the old characers return, even the ones who don't like me. e-Ireland was a fascinating community. We fought so hard against each other and yet still managed to punch way above our weight on the world stage. I would like to see how far we could get when we are all a bit older and wiser.

Tell us more about the Irish civil war vs IDF and their parties.
-That was what lit the fuse. For me that was actually a sad time. I never wanted to be hated by a sizeable % of the country and we were. There was a bitterness about that whole thing that never fully healed. After OJ was impeached and the Civil War started, I knew any chance of us ever being a united country was gone. Our options at that point were walk away and leave the country to them or fight them at every turn, down every avenue and from every angle. A lot of energy went into gaining and keeping control of Ireland. The formation of the Irish Army helped a lot though it allowed ordinary citizens to just join up and fight for Ireland without being immediately in the crosshairs of one side or the other.

How did Ireland's colony in USA happen?
-Poland wanted to rent regions in USA. MPPs were expensive back then so they couldnt just swap into an allies regions without a 3rd country acting as a bridge. So I met with Ariakis, then CP of Poland and we came up with an agreement. Phoenix tried to stop the swaps. UK declared war on Ireland. Until that time UK and Ireland never had been directly at war. UK liked to make out that Ireland started the first war, but the truth is UK opened the first war.
This war saw the whole world fighting in Irish regions, in a war against UK
it was a pivotal moment in Ireland's evolution from neutral to being a badass country. Poland spent fortunes on seeing out the swaps. And there were mmany setbacks and twists and turns, but eventually they succeeded. Ireland ended up keeping a couple of regions in USA, neither of any huge value other than pride.

How did you defeat Patton? The guy the rightists rallied around?
-He had Ireland by the balls. As pretty much a newcomer I ran against him for CP. I swear never again will anyone ever run such a good campaign as I did. I owned the media. Had international articles of support. Was giving JFK like speeches. And he still beat me. He was never an enemy of mine though to be honest. He wasnt a bad guy. His supporters were not my type of people though. Even though he won that election he knew I was the future. That election was a great battle. The problem with old-eIreland is they didnt have one figure to unite behind, patton really was the last one. Then moomoohead. But the rest of them were not in any way inspirational. Patton and moo were very strong characters. Moo was a bit radical though, willing to try things and he eventually seen that we were right. It was his term when the swaps happened and I approached him with the idea of Ireland being the bridge nation for the swaps. And he inherited most of Pattons supporters when Patton left. But moo was more willing to listen to ideas and more importantly, to give credit to people for ideas that worked. Whereas Patton would take all your ideas and then take all the credit for himself lol.