Country
The gold harp on blue is attributed to the King of Ireland in a French roll of arms of about 1280; it replaced the three crowns of the medieval Lordship as the arms of the Kingdom of Ireland in 1541, and was registered as the arms of the state in 1945. The green, white and orange tricolour, first combined in 1830 and raised over Dublin in 1916, has been the national flag since the Free State and is named in the Constitution of 1937.
Flag
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| Flag | Vertical tricolour of green, white and orange, 1:2 |
|---|---|
| Legal basis | Article 7 of the Constitution of Ireland (1937) |
| Colours | Pantone 347 green and 151 orange (Department of the Taoiseach) |
| Arms | Azure, a harp Or, stringed Argent |
| First recorded | Wijnbergen Roll, about 1280, for the King of Ireland |
| Registered | 9 November 1945, with the Chief Herald of Ireland |
Before the tricolour, Ireland was represented by heraldic banners: the three crowns of the Lordship, then the harp of the Kingdom, until the union of 1801 brought Ireland into the Union Flag; the green flag with a harp was meanwhile the most popular national symbol. The tricolour of green, white and orange, meant as a symbol of union between Catholics and Protestants, became the national flag after the Easter Rising of 1916. These are the stages of the flag from the 15th century.
Click the thumbnails to go through the flags.
1467
Azure, three crowns in pale Or, bordure Argent.
Under the Lordship of Ireland, the realm that existed under the English crown from 1171 to 1541, Ireland had arms of its own: a commission of Edward IV in about 1467–8 into the arms of Ireland found them to be three golden crowns, one above the other, on blue with a white border. According to English Wikipedia, their association with Ireland likely originated with Irish magnates, both Norman and Gaelic, who fought in Edward I’s Scottish wars at the turn of the 14th century and adopted these arms of Edmund the Martyr as their banner, in the same way as English lords identified with the banner of Saint George. Wikimedia Commons describes the image as the banner of the Lordship of Ireland.
1542
Azure, a harp Or, stringed Argent.
When Henry VIII ended the Lordship and declared Ireland a kingdom in 1541, the harp was adopted as the symbol of the new Kingdom of Ireland. English Wikipedia notes that the three crowns are believed to have been abandoned after Henry VIII’s split with the Papacy, perhaps because they might denote the feudal sovereignty of the pope, whose tiara has three crowns. At the funeral of Elizabeth I in 1603 the Earl of Clanrickarde is shown carrying the banner of Ireland, as in the Wijnbergen Roll of about 1280: a gold harp on blue. Wikimedia Commons describes the image as the Royal Standard of Ireland, used from 1542 to 1801.
1801
The British flag with the red saltire of Saint Patrick on white added.
In 1783 George III founded the Order of Saint Patrick, whose badge bore a red saltire on white, called the “Cross of St Patrick”; the association of the saltire with Saint Patrick dates from then, and its origin is disputed. When the Acts of Union 1800 joined the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain, the saltire was added to the British flag to form the Union Flag still used by the United Kingdom. According to English Wikipedia, some Irish nationalists opposed the use of the flag to represent Ireland, as they considered it a British invention. Wikimedia Commons dates the flag from 1 January 1801.
1916
The national flag is the tricolour of green, white and orange (Article 7 of the Constitution of Ireland).
Green had long been associated with the Irish, and the green flag with a harp, used by Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill in 1642 and by the Catholic Confederation, then by the United Irishmen in the 1790s, held undisputed sway as the most popular national symbol until the eve of the Easter Rising. According to English Wikipedia, green and orange were first combined in a cockade at a political rally in Cork in March 1830, and white was added by Emelia Eleanor Hamilton of Annadale, Dublin, in a tricolour cockade sent to a meeting in September 1830 that saluted the French July Revolution; the Repeal campaign of Daniel O’Connell adopted it in December 1830. In April 1848 the Young Irelanders, back from France, presented a tricolour, and Thomas Francis Meagher explained: “The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between the ‘Orange’ and the ‘Green’, and I trust that beneath its folds the hands of the Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants may be clasped in heroic brotherhood.” Raised above the General Post Office in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, the tricolour came to be regarded as the national flag. It was adopted by the Irish Republic during the War of Independence (1919–1921), kept by the Irish Free State from 1922 without any statute, and given constitutional status in 1937.
A gold harp on blue appears as the arms of the King of Ireland about 1280. Under the Lordship the arms of Ireland were three crowns, until Henry VIII made the harp the arms of his new kingdom in 1541; it has remained the arms of Ireland since, and was registered as the arms of the state in 1945. These are the stages of the arms from about 1280.
Click the thumbnails to go through the coats of arms.
1280
D’azure a la harpe d’or: blue with a harp of gold (Wijnbergen Roll).
Heraldry came to Ireland only with the Norman invasion of 1169. One of the oldest medieval rolls of arms, the French Wijnbergen Roll of about 1280, preserved in The Hague, attributes a gold harp on blue to the King of Ireland, “le Roi d’Irlande”. The harp, traditionally associated with the biblical King David, was a rare charge on medieval rolls. English Wikipedia gives several possible origins: triangular devices on the Irish coins of John and Edward I, which may have been crude harps; a fictional “roi d’irelande” in the courtly legend of Tristan; or a celebrated 13th-century bardic poem dedicated to Donnchadh Cairbreach O’Briain, King of Thomond. The blue was first chosen by the French heralds of the Wijnbergen Roll; it is sometimes misattributed to St Patrick’s blue, but there is no connection. The image, described by Wikimedia Commons as a shield of arms of Ireland, is used by English Wikipedia for the arms of the Kingdom of Ireland.
1467
Azure, three crowns in pale Or, bordure Argent.
The Lordship of Ireland had separate arms, found by a commission of Edward IV in about 1467–8: three golden crowns on blue with a white border. Besides Edmund the Martyr, these arms were well known in other medieval contexts and are often attributed to King Arthur. An unused sketch by Nicholas Hilliard for a Great Seal of Ireland shows, beside Elizabeth I, the harp and the three crowns, successive arms of Ireland; an Elizabethan variant with three harps, one replacing each crown, found on coins, maps and seals from 1562, appears to have been a creation of the newly established Ulster King of Arms and never replaced the single harp. The arms of Munster, three antique crowns on blue, are thought to derive from those of the Lordship, or from the dukedom of Ireland created for Robert de Vere in 1386.
1541
Azure, a harp Or, stringed Argent.
Henry VIII adopted the harp as the arms of the Kingdom of Ireland in 1541, and a document in the office of the Ulster King of Arms, from the late reign of Henry VIII or the early reign of Edward VI, states that they were the arms of the kingdom. When the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland were united in 1603, the harp was integrated into the unified royal arms. The crest shown in the image, a tower triple-towered Or, from the portal a hart springing Argent, attired and unguled Or, is thought to have been created for the accession of James I in 1603, and was little used even then. From the 17th century the harp was commonly drawn with a woman’s head and breasts as its pillar, like a ship’s figurehead. The harp surmounted by a crown served as a heraldic badge, used by Elizabeth I on her second Great Seal of 1586. English Wikipedia captions the image as the armorial achievement of the Kingdom of Ireland, including the infrequently used crest.
1945
Azure, a harp Or, stringed Argent.
When the Irish Free State separated from the United Kingdom in 1922, the harp was taken as the emblem of the independent state, and a late-medieval Gaelic harp, a cláirseach, the Trinity College Harp, was used as the model; it is also called the Brian Boru harp and is kept in Trinity College Dublin. The arms were registered as the arms of Ireland with the Chief Herald of Ireland on 9 November 1945. The strings are always silver and the harp always gold, and it is not necessary to show all thirty strings, provided there are no fewer than nine. The crest and torse of the Kingdom are not employed by the Irish state today. Wikimedia Commons describes the image as the arms of Ireland with 14 strings.
Article 7 of the Constitution of Ireland simply states: “The national flag is the tricolour of green, white and orange.” The Department of the Taoiseach takes general responsibility for the flag, in an advisory role; its guidelines state that the flag should be rectangular, its length double its width, and the three pales of equal size and vertically disposed, with the green next to the staff. There are no statutory requirements: observing the guidelines is a matter for each individual.
Since at least 2001 the Department of the Taoiseach has set the green at Pantone 347 and the orange at Pantone 151. Yellow or gold is occasionally seen instead of orange; the department has called this a misrepresentation that “should be actively discouraged”.
No flag should be flown above the national flag, which takes the place of honour. It should be displayed in the open only between sunrise and sunset, except at public meetings, processions or funerals, should never touch the ground, and on a coffin the green should be at the head. It is flown from all state buildings with flagpoles on Saint Patrick’s Day, on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday in commemoration of the Easter Rising, and on the National Day of Commemoration, the Sunday closest to 11 July.
The Merchant Shipping Act 1894 was not repealed after independence, so the Free State’s merchant ships were technically required to fly the Red Ensign; some did, others sailed under the tricolour. Irish ships could fly the Red Ensign until September 1939, when an emergency decree was made so that neutral Irish ships were not mistaken for British ones. The tricolour’s marine status was formalised by the Merchant Shipping Act 1947.
After partition in 1921 Northern Ireland kept the Union Flag. For many years the tricolour was effectively banned there under the Flags and Emblems (Display) Act (Northern Ireland) 1954. Under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, all participants acknowledged “the sensitivity of the use of symbols and emblems for public purposes”; the tricolour is never flown from official buildings in Northern Ireland, and is flown by nationalists and republicans.
The arms of the four traditional provinces are popularly displayed quartered as arms of Ireland, usually in the order Leinster, Connacht, Ulster, Munster.
According to English Wikipedia, white was first added to green and orange by Emelia Eleanor Hamilton of Annadale, Dublin, in a tricolour cockade sent to a meeting in September 1830 that saluted the French July Revolution. The Young Irelanders took up the tricolour in 1848, and Thomas Francis Meagher, presenting it in April 1848, formalised the white in the centre and explained the meaning of the colours.
According to English Wikipedia, the green stands for the Roman Catholics and the orange for the minority Protestants who were supporters of William of Orange; the white in the centre signifies a lasting peace and hope for union between them. Irish Wikipedia describes the green as standing for the Gaelic tradition. The flag as a whole is intended to symbolise the inclusion and hoped-for union of the people of different traditions on the island of Ireland.
A gold harp on blue is attributed to the King of Ireland in the Wijnbergen Roll of about 1280. Henry VIII made it the arms of the Kingdom of Ireland in 1541, it was integrated into the royal arms in 1603, and the Irish Free State took it as its emblem in 1922; it was registered as the arms of Ireland on 9 November 1945. Its origin is uncertain: English Wikipedia mentions triangular devices on medieval Irish coins, the legend of Tristan and a 13th-century bardic poem.
No. English Wikipedia notes that the claim is not strictly accurate: the kundu drum is the symbol of Papua New Guinea, the karyenda drum formerly appeared on the flag and arms of Burundi, and the arms of Trinidad and Tobago depict the steelpan.
The flag of the Ivory Coast has a similar colour layout, but with the orange at the hoist and the proportions 2:3 instead of 1:2. According to English Wikipedia, the similarity has led to the Ivorian flag being mistaken for the Irish one, in Northern Ireland and even in a Dublin pub in 2016.
In 1984 the Government of Ireland registered exemplars of the modern design, approved by the Chief Herald, with the World Intellectual Property Organization, and only registered left-facing images, with the sound board on the right. The Attorney General’s office felt that right-facing images should also be registered, but patent agents advised that this might interfere with the use of such harps by Guinness in its logo since the 1870s.
Illustrations: Wikimedia Commons. Banner and arms of the Lordship by NsMn (CC BY 3.0); harp banner of 1542 by TRAJAN 117 (CC BY-SA 3.0); arms of 1280 and 1541 by Sodacan (CC BY-SA 3.0 and 4.0); other illustrations in the public domain.
Last reviewed by the Emblema Mundi editorial team on 25 October 2026.
Ireland is one of the six Celtic nations — see the golden harp and the tricolour beside the emblems of Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man.