Ireland never industrialised to the same extent as Britain so it kept a significant rural population for much longer. An industrial economy can afford to buy imported food instead of growing everything it needs so it can sustain a higher population. So if Ireland had had an industrial boom in the early 19th century then it's people wouldn't have been so dependent on potatoes and the famine wouldn't have happened. But a main reason why this didn't happen was a legacy of the Penal Laws so you need a much more enlightened British administration.
I haven't got any figures but I'm sure I read somewhere that if it hadn't been for Catholic out migration NI would have had a Catholic majority within the last 20 years. There was an unofficial "Breed them out!" policy among Northern Nationalists for many years, it wasn't until the 1960's that Catholic birth rates in NI began to decline when they had been doing so in the South before that.
I haven't got any figures but I'm sure I read somewhere that if it hadn't been for Catholic out migration NI would have had a Catholic majority within the last 20 years. There was an unofficial "Breed them out!" policy among Northern Nationalists for many years, it wasn't until the 1960's that Catholic birth rates in NI began to decline when they had been doing so in the South before that.