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This article takes a variational pragmatic approach to formulae of apology in Irish English by comparing the speech of the speakers from Northern Ireland and that of the speakers from the Republic of Ireland. Using the Irish component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-Ireland) as a basis, the analysis centers on the different patterns of apology between these two regions not only in the frequency of occurrence and the types of apology, but also in the contextual constraints on the use of apology. Results indicate that there is no significant difference between the two regions whether in the frequency of occurrence or in the types of apology formulae. However, contexts are found to exert significant effect on the use of apology formulae. In public and institutional contexts, particularly those related to legal and political systems, the formulae of apology are much more frequently used in Northern Ireland than in the Republic of Ireland, which supports the hypothesis that political borders influence the choice of language use as proposed in previous studies.