Irish tea just might be the national beverage of Ireland. Believe it or not, the Irish drink more tea per capita than any other country in the world. There are over 4 million people in Ireland and 3 million are tea drinkers. The average Irishman or Irishwoman drinks about 4 to 6 cups a day.
Officially name: The Republic of Ireland
Capital: Dublin
Largest city: Dublin
Official language: Irish, English
Government: Constitutional republic, Parliamentary democracy
For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a disproportionate contribution to world literature in all its branches, in both the Irish and English languages.
The island's most widely-known literary works are undoubtedly in English. Particularly famous examples of such works are those of James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature; William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney.