Part of the decline of Irish protestants is down to the ethnic cleansing - much of it seems to have been voluntary in a "I'm not living in a country run by Papists" sort of way - on both sides of the border in the '20s, intermarriage and the subsequent raising of children as Catholics, emigration along with everyone else and a much lower birth rate through most of the 20th C.
The discrimination issue is difficult: the Republic of Ireland was a nasty unpleasant little place until at least the '60s under the thumb of a Catholic church that ruled both in the education system and in the health system. A Protestant teacher or doctor would certainly have encountered problems outside of Protestant run hospitals and schools. Other than that, I'm not sure how much trouble they would have had. Less than Catholics in the North I think: don't forget that the recent Troubles started off as a Catholic civil rights movement that drew violence from the Protestant majority. British troops first entered the North to protect Catholics. It sort of went downhill from there ...
As far as I can make out, the Republic has now normalised itself to the point where it's only as unpleasant as the average country.
Ireland isn't part of the Commonwealth.
1922-1937 The Irisj Free State was part of the Commonwealth.
The discrimination issue is difficult, but it did happen.
And as I'm sure you won't deny, in Scotland where this discussion all started out, the SNP does play on the economic resentment of Scots to English economic influence.
And if the SNP nationalized that oil, Scotland would have enormous wealth.
This is the origin of the slogan, It's Scotland's Oil.
I suspect this is the reason for US interested in the Scottish question.
And after the oil, there's the issue Izzy brings up of land ownership. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
