FACTBOX-Key facts about Northern Ireland

(Reuters) - Northern Ireland's main Protestant and Catholic political parties agreed on Monday to start sharing power on May 8.

Following are some key facts about Northern Ireland:

POPULATION - 1,685,000.

AREA - 5,500 sq. miles (14,000 square km) on an island shared by the bigger Republic of Ireland to the south and west.

RELIGION - 2001 census showed 53.1 percent of population Protestant and 43.8 percent Roman Catholic.

GOVERNMENT - Part of the United Kingdom. Under the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement a Protestant-Catholic power-sharing assembly was established in Belfast with limited home rule powers. Suspended in 2002 and direct rule from London resumed.

HISTORY - Northern Ireland's sectarian divisions can be traced back to the 17th Century when Protestant settlers from Scotland and England were "planted" in the north-eastern part of the island to bolster the authority of the English Crown.

An abortive uprising against British rule in Dublin in 1916 paved the way for 1921's Anglo-Irish Treaty which partitioned the island, separating the mainly Protestant north-east from the overwhelmingly Catholic south and west.

Simmering sectarian tensions exploded into violence in the late 1960s, with British troops under attack from Irish Republican Army guerrillas. Militant Protestant "loyalist" groups sought to defend British rule by killing Catholics.

A low-level guerrilla war raged for the next 30 years, claiming more than 3,600 lives. The IRA called a cease-fire in 1997 and a year later the landmark Good Friday peace agreement was signed, setting up a power-sharing assembly at Stormont in Belfast. The assembly has been suspended several times amid political in-fighting and has been on ice since 2002. Power sharing will restart on May 8, 2007, after DUP leader Ian Paisley's first face-to-face meeting with Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams.

ECONOMY - Once a world leader in building ships -- including the Titanic -- and in rope and textile production, Northern Ireland's main industries have been in decline since the 1960s.

Heavily subsidised by Britain, the economy has recently started to benefit from inward investment by high-tech multinationals attracted by government incentives and a skilled workforce but lags far behind the thriving Irish Republic.

London and Dublin pledged a multi-billion pound (dollar) package to boost infrastructure and job creation over the next few years when the province's political parties agreed to share power.