June 2014
History Selection |
![]() Murderof Shane O'Neill
June 1567 |
![]() Sackof Baltimore
June 1620 |
![]() Battleof Vinegar Hill
June 1798 |
![]() Nora Barnaclemet James Joyce
June 1904 |
![]() Kennedyvisited Ireland
June 1963 |
![]() Murderof Veronica Guerin
June 1996 |
Ireland in 2004 |
January 1st: Ireland took on the Presidency of the European Commission. January 1st: Scouting Ireland was founded. February: Former INLA member Bobby Tohill was targetted by an IRA 'nutting squad'. February 28th: Five people were killed in a bus crash at Wellington Quay in Dublin. March 16th: The cooling towers at Rhode Power Station in Co. Westmeath were demolished. | ![]() Bertie Ahern at an EU ceremony in 2004 |
![]() Smoking ban |
March 27th: Ireland's rugby team won the Triple Crown for the first time in 19 years. March 29th: A smoking ban was introduced, which came into effect in all pubs, restaurants and work places. April 23rd: Gerry Adams said he felt the peace process was in 'deep crisis' after a report into paramilitary violence. April 28th: Loyalists protested on Sandy Row, calling for the eviction of nationalists. May: Efforts were made to end a loyalist feud in Belfast. |
May: An inquest ruled that the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings were 'unlawfully killed' but did not determine who was responsible. June 25th: American President George W. Bush arrived in Ireland for an EU-U.S summit. June 30th: French President Jacques Chirac said Ireland had led 'the best presidency ever' of the European Commission. July 10th: A diver died after surfacing too rapidly off the Co. Antrim coast. July 20th: Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy was appointed as Ireland's next European Commissioner. |
![]() Charlie McCreevy |
![]() Cathal Lombard |
August 7th: Irish runner Cathal Lombard was accused of taking performance enhancing drugs at the Olympic Games. August 13th: Minister for Agriculture Joe Walsh retired from Cabinet after seven years. He had been the longest-serving agriculture minister in Europe. August 27th: Cian O'Connor won a gold medal for Ireland in the Olympics. September 8th: Former Taoiseach John Bruton was appointed E.U. Ambassador to the United States. September 29th: Mary Coughlan was appointed Ireland's first female Minister for Agriculture. |
September 30th: DUP leader Ian Paisley made an historic first visit to Dublin for political talks with the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. October 1st: Mary McAleese was re-elected unopposed for a second term as Irish President October 2nd: Ireland's second national TV channel, N2, reverted to the name RTÉ Two. October 5th: The Irish Government issued an Irish passport to the British hostage Ken Bigley in a futile attempt to secure his release in Iraq. October 16th: Taoiseach Bertie Ahern held talks with the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, in Dublin. October 19th: Dublin-born aid worker Margaret Hassan was kidnapped in Iraq. |
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![]() The Colombia Three |
November 3rd: Fran Rooney resigned as chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland. November 9th: Banned substances were found in the sample of Waterford Crystal, a racehorse. November 15th: Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív was involved in a car crash. November 16th: Margaret Hassan was murdered in Iraq. December 8th: Talks in Northern Ireland over power-sharing broke down over the IRA's refusal to allow arms decommissioning to be photographed, while Ian Paisley refused to witness the disarmament himself. December 16th: In Colombia, IRA men Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan were handed long sentences for training Colombian Marxist rebels. |
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Between the eighteenth and late twentieth centuries, women who failed to live up to society's harsh moral rules or were simply the victims of abuse
were incarcerated in institutions known as Magdalene asylums or Magdalene laundries. These asylums operated throughout Europe and North America. The first
Irish asylum opened on Leeson Street in Dublin in 1765 and the last closed in 1996. Although originally intended to rehabilitate women, by the early
twentieth century asylums were caring for unwed mothers and other 'wayward' girls. The regime was tough and exploitative.
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Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland Publisher: Mercier Press Date published: 2013 ![]() In this important book, Anne Cadwallader explores the issue of collusion between security forces and loyalist paramilitaries, focusing on tragedies that took place in the 'murder triangle' of Co. Armagh and Tyrone during the mid-seventies. This was the era of the Glennane Gang, an alliance of UVF paramilitaries and agents of the state, who are said to have murdered around 120 people. Almost all of their victims were civilians. Not only were members of the the UDR and RUC proven to have taken part in incidents such as the Miami Showband massacre and the Rock Bar gun attack, there is documentary evidence that the security forces knew and accepted the presence of paramilitaries in their ranks. Cadwallader suggests that the police actively sabotaged investigations and bulied the relatives of victims. Prolific murderers such as Robin Jackson were permitted to kill with impunity; centres from which loyalists were known to operate escaped observation at crucial times. Cadwallader points out that the civilian targets of loyalists were not outspoken IRA sympathisers, but members of the growing Catholic middle class. This sectarian motivation went hand-in-hand, Cadwallader says, with the British tactic practised more explicity in other parts of the world of using native forces to suppress other natives. The British wanted not only to dissuade civilians from supporting republican paramilitaries, but also to force the co-operation of the Irish government. The bombings of Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, claimed by the UVF, were, Cadwallader argues, far too sophisticated for the loyalists at that time. The Irish government agreed to support the British in their fight against republican paramilitaries without demanding the truth about attacks carried out on their own soil. |
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