AHC: Divided Ireland

What happened in this timeline to make Ireland look like this by the present day? No ASBs.
alternate ireland.png
 
1. During the Civil War, Pro-Treaty and Anti Treaty factions end up dividing the Republic such that the PT gets Leinster and most of Free Ulster, AT gets Connaught and Donegal, and Munster (where fighting is worst and each side commits atrocities) is split.

2. Irish Communists, mostly veterans of the Limerick Soviet, take control over Munster. The populace, tired of the war crimes of both IRA factions, support them.

3.The UK intervenes again on some pretext, conquering all of Ulster as well as Midhe. Realising its not worth it to hold the entire island, the cede Midhe back to the Pro Treaty Republic, seeking to bolster its legitimacy, on the caveat that it (with Dublin) is administered as an autonomous zone. In exchange, the PT Republic recognizes British sovereignty over Ulster.

3. The AT faction, seething over British and PT betrayal, never reconciles, and neither faction is strong enough to take out the other without falling to the Reds. A cautious truce emerges.

4. In Ulster, the larger Irish population is nust as disadvantaged as OTL, but has more power of numbers. Ultimately, the compromiae of releasing only the North as a dominion is reached.

Edit: this might be better in After 1900.
 
Maybe a successful 1798 rebellion leading to Ireland being divided it to states a with a federal government modelled the system in the USA.
Federal Republic of Ireland
 
1) Nationalists negotiating an Ulster exclusion play a long game and decide to cede all of Ulster to British Rule and ensuring that Unionists have only a 51% majority. Thus making reunification either in entirety or as a step by step process a virtually certainty. Or so they thought...
2) This is unpopular with the rank and file and the Nationalist movement splinters and messes it all up.
3)Foreign powers start supporting their favoured faction: Left-wing nationalists come to the fore in Munster and are given patronage by the USSR/Russian Social Republic.
The OTL anti-treaty forces find their main support in Connaught and gain German patronage; Britain doesn't like this but tolerates it out of the need to counter the Soviets/Social Revolutionaries and impossibility of gaining Connacht's direct co-operation.
4) Leinster and Meath are locked in internal dissention between outright (though not fanatical Gaelicizers or pro German)Republicans and export-centric large commercial farmers and Dublin businessmen and industrial workers who are alarmed at the redistributionist (though not Communist) measures of the Republic of Leinster and deteriorating relations with their main export market (Britain). Westmeath/Meath/Dublin nearly secedes but France (into whose orbit the Republic of Leinster is falling0 presses for a compromise pointing out that a civil war will only lead to Leinster being conquered by the (actually only moderately) godless Communards of Munster or the lunatics of Connacht and Meath is given a Redmondite Home Rule within Leinster. Meath moves closer in orbit to Britain and gradually accrues more and more powers to itself until it is de facto independent. However it doesn't formalise this for fear of hostility from Leinster and possibly Connacht as well.
4) Ulster is initially Unionist governed but is forced to be relatively conciliating to its large Nationalist minority. Northern nationalists look at the situation in their Southern neighbours with horror. Middle class and devout Catholic nationalists are terrified of Ulster becoming a Munster and the Catholic hierarchy and the very devout are not very keen on either Meath or Leinster (which are mildly anticlerical on the French model) nor are the Anglophone nationalist working class really attracted by the fervent Gaelicization of Connacht nor the anti-trade union measures and forced industrialisation and military conscription of their Corporate State. The Northern wing of the IPP reinvents itself as the Liberal Party and pushes for full Dominion Status within the British Commonwealth which is finally achieved in the Statute of Westminster.
 
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