Irish Flag History:

     From the Irish Constitution: The national flag is the tricolor of green, white and orange. The Irish flag is separated into three equal bands of color and its width is equal to twice its height. The Tricolor is used as the civil and state flag and as the naval ensign.

     The green band represents those of indigenous Irish descent, the orange stripe represents a group which supported William of Orange who are the descendants of 17th-century British colonists, and the white band symbolizes the hope for peace between the two groups.

On March 7, 1848 at a meeting held in Waterford City, Thomas Francis Meagher, a leader of the Young Ireland movement, presented the flag to the public for the first time. A month later at another meeting in Dublin, Meagher made the following speech when he presented the flag: "The white in the center signifies a lasting truce between the Orange and the Green, and I trust that beneath its folds the hands of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood."
 
     A Green Flag was used by the supporters of Meagher's contemporary, Daniel O’Connell, but those in the Young Ireland movement were republicans and required a distinctive standard which would clearly express their republicanism. The design of the new Irish flag was modeled on that of the French Republic. Orange was placed next to the staff  on the original Tricolor but was virtually forgotten after the collapse of the 1848 rebellion. The Irish Volunteers in the Easter rising of 1916 arranged the colors in their modern order with green next to the staff. The republicans won a landslide victory in the general election of 1918 and that made certain that the green, white, and orange tricolor would be the national flag of Ireland.