I grew up in the republic of Ireland and only associated the Red hand with unionism. ( I can find an article from 1999 talking about Sinn Fein complaining abou

I grew up in the republic of Ireland and only associated the Red hand with unionism. ( I can find an article from 1999 talking about Sinn Fein complaining about the Red Hand in the north - https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/the-red-hand-of-ulster-1.264922 https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/the-red-hand-of-ulster-1.... ). Don't know about nowadays though. > is viewed quite negatively by the unionist community even though ironically it is supposed to symbolize peace (white) between the nationalist (green) and unionist (orange - a la William of Orange) communities. In my (Catholic) school down the country we were (IIRC) never taught that the third colour was orange, but gold. Wikipedia gives two reasons for this, IIRC - one that it's easier to rhyme and the other being that people don't want to acknowledge the meaning/have to think about unionists when talking about the flag. (I don't remember learning the meaning of the flag either, but maybe it was covered once).