Why is Northern Ireland not included as part of the United Kingdom in the map section

Question

Map of UK only shows three of the four constituent countries.

Answer 1

Because that is how geocaching.com defines countries. We use the same country definitions as they do for consistency, even when they are not quite normal.

This is not the only case, for that matter. The Aland Island (part of Finland) are also considered a separate country. On the other hand, Antarctica is considered a single country even though it is divided into parts belonging to a number of countries (even overlapping parts, if I remember correctly).

Comments

But it is not entirely consistent. On the Map-tab in the profile statistics, Northern Ireland is coloured green (if you happen to have found a cache in the UK) in the world and Europe map, but on the map of the UK, Northern Ireland suddenly is grey. So if Project-GC follows the geocaching.com definitions, Northern Ireland should not be coloured on the world/Europe maps.