I know that the Protestants in the North were Unionists, but in the South was there any part of the population that wanted to stay in the British Union?
Could the British government have satisfied Legitamte Irish Complaints without having to go for Home Rule or Republicanism?
In hindsight, was Independence inevitable, or if the House of Lords had lost influence and the Welfare state had been founded before Irish Independence, could that have scuppered republicanism?
Mny thks for any info
Probably the most accurate way of assessing the public mood of Ireland leading up to the partition of the island by the Westminster government in 1920 - and the breaking away from the UK of the Irish Free State in December 1921 - would be the General Election of December 1918.
Sinn Féin - canvassing on a platform of secession - won 73 out of a total of 105 seats. Irish Home Rule candidates, formally known as the Irish Parliamentary Party, took 6 and Unionists supported by the English Conservative Party won a total of 26 seats.
Most of the Unionists wins were in the north eastern part of Ulster. But taking Ulster as a whole , Unionists won 23 out of the total 38 seats. The other 3 Unionists seats outside of Ulster were: 1 from a Dublin suburb, Rathmines, and 2 seats from Trinity College Dublin, traditionally a Protestant University.
Sinn Féin subsequently in January 1919 declared Irish independence and set up a Dublin government for the whole island which they called Dáil Éireann. Today's Dáil Éireann claims descent from this body but both the [British] Government of Ireland Act of 1920 and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 limited their governing area to only 26 of the 32 Irish counties.
To answer you about satisfying Irish concerns - the constitutional battle for a Home Rule Dublin parliament had been fought over for decades. Daniel O'Connell had organised mass meetings in the 1840s to protest Ireland's union with Britain within the UK. Crowds of up 250,000 showed up. Later on in 1870 Isaac Butt, an Irish Protestant MP, formed the Home Rule initiative within the Irish Party to formally seek Home Rule for Ireland. This constitutional battle went on for decades without success with Home Rule bills either being defeated [in 1886 and 1891] or being passed in such a modified form [1912 and subsequent delay] as to include no taxation rights, no Irish army, partition of the island. The Westminster Parliament would have had a veto power over any laws passed in Dublin. The Home Rule bill of 1912/14 gained little support from the growing body of republican nationalists.
Suggested reading: Home Rule: an Irish History by Alvin Jackson