Ireland? Oh, you mean England...
It's 40 times the size of Ireland and 7.5 times the size of Germany; population of 16.7m; more natural resources than you can shake a stick at; capital Astana (moved from Almaty in 1998). Its president is one Nursultan A. Nazarbayev and its prime minister is Kazymzhomart Tokayev. And I bet you haven't a clue where it is.

I find the Irish in particular are always a little surprised when they're abroad and meet a foreigner who knows absolutely nothing about our little country, bar maybe having a vague (and generally wrong) notion about Northern Ireland. I've had this a few times until it occurred to me: why should they? Especially when I meet a Kazakhstani (re)immigrant who knows more about the Irish/Celts in general than I do. My mission in life is now to read up on Kazakhstan (link above) and every other country, er, in the world; then I'll be entitled to be outraged at some Johnny Foreigner's ignorance of the Emerald Isle :-)

Also, history of the Irish republic in a nutshell, courtesy of the CIA World Factbook:
"A failed 1916 Easter Monday Rebellion touched off several years of guerrilla warfare that in 1921 resulted in independence from the UK for the 26 southern counties; the six northern counties (Ulster) remained part of Great Britain. In 1948 Ireland withdrew from the British Commonwealth; it joined the European Community in 1973. Irish governments have sought the peaceful unification of Ireland and have cooperated with Britain against terrorist groups. A peace settlement for Northern Ireland, approved in 1998, has not yet been implemented."