Irish Scottish people
ethnic group in Scotland
Irish-Scots (Scottish Gaelic: Albannaich ri sinnsireachd Èireannach) are people in Scotland who have Irish ancestry.
Although there has been migration from Ireland (especially Ulster) to Scotland and elsewhere in Britain for millennia, Irish migration to Scotland increased in the nineteenth century, and was highest following the Great Famine. This played a major role, even before Catholic Emancipation in 1829, in rebuilding and re-establishing the formerly illegal Catholic Church in Scotland following centuries of religious persecution. In this period, the Irish typically settled in urban slum neighborhoods and around industrial areas. Irish ancestry is by far the most common foreign ancestry in Scotland.
Famous Irish-Scots include Irish republican and socialist revolutionary James Connolly, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, left-wing politician George Galloway, actors Sean Connery, Brian Cox, Peter Capaldi and Gerard Butler, musicians Gerry Rafferty, Maggie Reilly, Jimme O'Neill, Clare Grogan and Fran Healy and stand-up comedians Sir Billy Connolly, Fern Brady, and Frankie Boyle.
The term Irish-Scots is different from Ulster-Scots (sometimes known as Scots-Irish), a term used to denote those in the Irish province of Ulster who are descended from Lowland Scots and Northern English Protestants who settled there in large numbers during the Plantation of Ulster and subsequently.
Background
Attitudes to the waves of immigration from Ireland to Scotland were mixed, as evidenced by the following quotations:
In our opinion, the Irish have as much right to come to this country to better their lives as the Scots and English have to go to Ireland or any other part of Britain for the same reason. Let us hear no more complaints about the influx of Irish having a bad effect on Scotland unless it is to do something about tackling the problems which caused the emigration.
The immigration of such a number of people from the lowest class and with no education will have a bad effect on the population.
The public source identifies “Irish Scottish people” as ethnic group in Scotland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Irish, Scottish and people.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Irish Scottish people”, the useful work is to connect “ethnic group in Scotland” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6070451. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1829.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Irish Scottish people primary sources, Irish Scottish people archive and Irish research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Irish Scottish people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.