1997 in Ireland - Events

Events

  • January 8 - Russia seeks to widen its ban on the importation of Irish beef due to BSE.
  • February 27 - The law providing for divorce comes into effect today.
  • March 6 - Michael Lowry resigns as a member of the Fine Gael Party.
  • March 7 - President Mary Robinson meets Pope John Paul II in the Vatican.
  • March 17 - The new national independent radio station, Radio Ireland, goes on the air.
  • April 8 - Author Frank McCourt is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book Angela's Ashes.
  • June 6 - In the Irish general elections, Fianna Fáil win a plurality of seats, and form a coalition government with the Progressive Democrats. Bertie Ahern replaces John Bruton as Taoiseach, and Mary Harney of the Progressive Democrats becomes Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade, and Employment.
  • June 12 - President Mary Robinson is appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
  • June 16 - National University of Ireland, Maynooth comes into existence with the commencement of the Universities Act, 1997.
  • July 3 - Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, meets Prime Minister Tony Blair for the first time.
  • July 6 - There is violence in nationalist areas after an Orange Order parade is allowed down the Garvaghy Road by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Portadown.
  • July 9 - Counsel for Charles Haughey admits that the former Taoiseach accepted £1.3 million from businessman Ben Dunne.
  • July 20 - The Irish Republican Army (IRA) institutes a second ceasefire.
  • September 12 - Mary Robinson resigns as President of Ireland to take up a United Nations post.
  • September 18 - Collins Barracks (Dublin) opens as converted to house the National Museum of Ireland's Decorative Arts and History collections.
  • October 7 - Substantial all-party talks begin in Northern Ireland.
  • November 1 - The Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal Act, 1997, takes effect.
  • November 7 - Dick Spring confirms that he is resigning as leader of the Labour Party.
  • November 11 - Mary McAleese is inaugurated as the eighth President of Ireland, the first time in the world that one woman has succeeded another as elected head of state.
  • November 13 - Ruairi Quinn wins the leadership of the Labour Party.
  • December 27 - The Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright is shot dead in the Maze prison by members of the Irish National Liberation Army.

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Famous quotes containing the word events:

    “There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.”
    —David Hume (1711–1776)

    “I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire—thinner than the paper on which it is printed—then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)