32 county Ireland

As Ulster says it'd be the troubles times a million.
Not only was the majority in the north quite commited to remaining in the union but they were also (quite rightly as it turns out) scared shitless of the power the catholic church could hold in an independant Ireland.
This might be so, but wouldn't the Catholic church have less influence in a state that was 25% Protestant?

Were Britain to try such a thing...political suicide for whoever does it (turning his back on loyal British citizens like that for no good reason) and most likely solution for Ireland is it ends up divided into two nations, a significantly larger and rather anti-catholic and nasty Rhodesia-esque Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Such an Ulster would have at best a Protestant plurality, so I don't really see how it could be achieved.

Not least because the sight of Protestant, Loyalist, Monarchists Britons fighting for their lives is going to send the early 20th Century Tory Party through the roof, even if the UK is somehow prevented from intervening (basically impossible) you are going to get tens of thousands of volunteers crossing the Irish Sea especially from Scotland.
There's no need for hyperboles.

Off the top of my head I think the percentages were approximately 70% in Northern Ireland (with sizeable majorities in Down and Antrim, and thinner ones elsewhere, especially in Fermanagh and Tyrone) and about 10% in the rest of Ireland (with a sizeable proportion of that being in Leinster).
According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, the Catholics were about 38% of the population in 1901 in Northern Ireland and almost 50% in Ulster (in Ireland as a whole it was 74%), but they were the majority in Fermanagh and Tyrone and over 40% in Londonderry and Armagh.
So as Blackfox said, the Irish government could take control over the catholic majority regions and the remainder (Antrim, most of Down and parts of Londonderry and Armagh) would perhaps be not be very viable, though I doubt this would stop the Ulster unionist.
The final result might be a division, but one more favorable to the South.
 
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Would the British help the Loyalists commit ethnic cleansing?

thats a hard call, more to the point could they really stop Unionists from going into Catholic areas and burning some houses down and leaving a clear message of "get out or die" they couldn't and didn't really stop such things in OTL till the Troubles so I'm betting the Unionists could force or scare enough Catholics out of Ulster to give themselves a majority
 
Would the British help the Loyalists commit ethnic cleansing?

Proper ethnic cleansing? No way in hell.
Population exchanges and (in planning at least) orderly population reshuffling...maybe.


Such an Ulster would have at best a Protestant plurality, so I don't really see how it could be achieved.
Ulster has most of the guns, money and industry.
 
Proper ethnic cleansing? No way in hell.
Population exchanges and (in planning at least) orderly population reshuffling...maybe.



Ulster has most of the guns, money and industry.

Well there was some more limited movement of the population after Irish independence IOTL, primarily of Protestants (approximately 40,000 or so, roughly 30% of the South's Protestant population) going to the North (mostly former membersof the RIC or the landed classes) and some Catholics going south, though again this was rather limited and non-government sponsered
 
IIRC at the outbreak of the Troubles the Heath Government considered a repartition of NI that involved huge forced movements of people to different areas. It was considered as very much a "Doomsday Scenario" if law and order had completely broken down and no serious thought was given to it.
 
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