ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the role of ethnography, history and national cultural mores as influences on prevalence of bullying behaviour, in the context of the island of Ireland. Ireland is a small country in the far west of Europe. It has always had a strong pattern of economic emigration with perhaps the most well-known cause of this gradual depopulation of rural Ireland being the Great Famine. The chapter focuses on Irelands approach to understanding bullying, measuring it and how Ireland has tried to prevent it through awareness, policies and Codes of Practice. A number of research projects in Ireland have yielded important data, which the author analyses and on which some comments, making cogent links with studies undertaken elsewhere in world. Ireland is the best country in the world in which to live, according to the Good Country Index, which examines the policies and behaviours of each of 125 countries and measures their respective levels of contribution to the human race.
